In North America, a coalition of businessmen and scientists decided on time zones, and in 1883, U.S. and Canadian railroads adopted four (Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific) to streamline service. The shift was not universally well received. Evangelical Christians were among the strongest opponents, arguing that “time came from God and railroads were not to mess with it,” Ms. Stephens said.
The introduction of time zones prompted fears of a kind of 19th-century Y2K. “Jewelers were busy yesterday answering questions from the curious, many of whom seemed to think that the change in time would generally create a sensation, a stoppage of business, and some sort of a disaster, the nature of which could not be exactly ascertained,” The New York Times reported in November 1883.
Once the time zone business was settled, it wasn’t long until Franklin’s idea for daylight saving was refashioned for the industrial world. In the 1900s, an English builder, William Willet, urged British lawmakers to shift the clocks to reap economic benefits. Parliament rejected the proposal in 1909, only to embrace it a few years later under the pressures of World War I. In 1916, Germany was the first European nation to enact the policy in an effort to cut energy costs, and over the next few years several Western nations followed suit. In the United States, the federal government took oversight of time zones in 1918. And in March of that year, the country lost its first hour of sleep.
But why?
One of the oldest arguments for daylight saving time is that it can save energy costs. There have been many conflicting studies about whether actually it does.
A Department of Energy report from 2008 found that the extended daylight saving time signed by George W. Bush in 2005 saved about 0.5 percent in total electricity use per day. Also that year, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the shift in daylight saving time, “contrary to the policy’s intent,” increased residential electricity demand by about 1 percent, raising electricity bills in Indiana by $9 million per year and increasing pollution emissions.
Energy savings was precisely the argument President Richard M. Nixon used in 1974 when he signed into law the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act amid a fuel crisis. But what started as a two-year experiment didn’t even make it the year. On Sept. 30, 1974, eight months after the experiment began, the Senate put the country back on standard time after widespread discontent.
Daylight saving time still has fervent supporters, especially among business advocates who argue it helps drive the economy.
Who wants to end it?
The European Union and several U.S. states, including California, Florida and Ohio, are either considering dropping the shift or taking steps to do so.
In March 2022, the Senate suddenly and unanimously passed legislation to do away with the twice-yearly time changes, making daylight saving time permanent. But the bill failed to make it out of the House. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, reintroduced the bill in March 2023.
If Congress passes the bill and if President Biden signs it, the new law would take about a year to implement.
In October 2022, Mexico’s Senate sent its president a bill to end daylight saving time for most of the country, but carved out an exception for the area along the United States border.
China, India and Russia do not use daylight saving time. Nor does Hawaii or most of Arizona. (The Navajo Nation, in northeastern Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, does observe.) Several U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam and the United States Virgin Islands also do not apply daylight saving time.
In 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine called for the abolition of daylight saving time. In a statement, the academy said the shift, by disrupting the body’s natural clock, could cause an increased risk of stroke and cardiovascular events, and could lead to more traffic accidents.
“Not only are we sleep deprived but we’re trying to force our brain into a little bit more of an unnatural sleep schedule,” said Dr. Rachel Ziegler, a physician in the sleep medicine department at Mayo Clinic Health System. “If you ask any sleep specialist, I think most of us would be in favor of a permanent schedule.”
Living as far north as we do, I have thought that the twice a year change was a painful necessity–particularly when folks talk about year round DST. At our latitude we simply don’t have enough “daylight” to “save” during the winter. During WWII I when I was in Omaha (toward the west edge of Central Time) the winter sunrise was around 9:00. But there is no denying that the ST/DST & vice versa changes do play havoc with our minds. Joan used to dread the first rehearsal of the Northwest Chamber Chorus after the change each season.