What is the point of Daylight Savings Time? Origin, gain and loss process, and more explained

Daylight Savings Time, also known as daylight time, is a practice that came into existence to extend the daytime i.e., stretching out the duration of the time between daybreak and sundown. It is executed twice a year — once during late winter or the advent of spring, when the clock is set forward by one hour, and a second time during fall or autumn, where it is set back by one hour to return to the standard time.

Benjamin Franklin, the polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, first came up with the idea of aligning daylight hours to waking hours in 1784 so that fewer candles are used, thus economizing their usage.

In 1895, New Zealand astronomer and entomologist George Vernon Hudson proposed advancing the clocks by two hours during spring. However, it was not followed through. In 1905, William Willett, a British builder, suggested that the clocks be set ahead by 20 minutes on each Sunday during April, and switch them back to their original time on each Sunday in September. But it was still not put into effect.

A few years later, British Parliament member Robert Pearce stumbled upon Willet’s Daylight Savings plan, and in 1908, introduced a bill in the House of Commons. However, even after presenting the bill to the Parliament several times, it faced opposition from many commoners and did not make it through as a law.

The very first practical usage of Daylight Savings Time was carried out by the residents of present-day Thunder Bay in Ontario in 1908, where they set their clocks forward by one hour and initiated the first DST period in the world.

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Further adoption of Daylight Savings Time, its present-day usage, and potential hour loss

After Ontario, many other Canadian regions followed suit. The practice was globally adopted after Germany introduced Daylight Time in 1916 as a means to minimize artificial lighting usage to save fuel during World War I.

United Kingdom, France, and several other countries quickly picked up the idea but reverted to the standard time once the First World War ended. However, DST returned to most European countries once World War II broke out.

As for the contemporary practice of DST, it starts on the second Sunday of March every year, when the clock is set forward by an hour. In 2023, it started on March 12 and ended on Sunday, November 5. The clocks are usually changed at 2 a.m. when the Daylight Time starts every year and changed back to the standard time at the same time when it ends.

However, there has been a recurring debate on its practice as most people are not content with the time changing twice a year. Many argued that it disrupts their routine and usual workflow. Another question about losing an hour due to Daylight Savings Time was also raised.

For example, when the DST starts in March and the clock is set forward by an hour at 2 a.m., the new time in numbers would be 3 a.m., but the time meant in a universal sense does not actually advance by an hour.

So, an individual who usually gets seven hours of sleep from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., would lose an hour as they would have to wake up at the modified 6 a.m. on the clock, which is, in the universal time, is 5 a.m. However, when Daylight Savings Time ends in November, and the clock is set back by one hour, an individual gains an extra hour as per the same calculation.