“Spring ahead, fall back.” The shifting of hours and the changing of clocks in connection with Daylight Savings Time has been going on for as long as I can remember.
As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve come to appreciate the “fall back” part of the process more and more. What the heck! It’s autumn, and it’s getting colder. Why not stay snug in your warm bed for an extra hour? And after staying out later than normal last night, getting home after midnight after enjoying the Buckeyes’ drubbing of Illinois at Ohio Stadium, the extra hour of shut-eye is even more welcome. The fact that it’s a shivery 28 degrees outside just confirms the wisdom of this timekeeping sleight-of-hand.
So I’d like to thank the ever-creative Benjamin Franklin, who came up with the concept of Daylight Savings Time in 1784 as a method to save on candles. I’d like to thank the New Zealanders, Brits, and Germans who helped to popularize the idea, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who implemented the idea in America as a war-time measure during World War II. And I’d like to thank the United States Congress, which enacted the Uniform Time Act of 1966 to finally implement Daylight Savings Time as we now know it.
Ben Franklin was all of 78 years old when he came up with the idea for shifting clocks to save a candle or two. You think the idea might have been motivated by the notion of getting an extra hour of sleep on a cold autumn morning?
Webner House 