Daylight Savings

No one would get rich betting on things I thought I knew but were wrong. Stuff I "knew" about Ben Franklin seems to lead the pack. (He didn't "invent" electricity - he merely observed it and it is somewhat suspect that the hemp string he used for his kite conducted much, if anything..but the subject is Daylight Savings so let's leap forward to it).

I learned, like you did, that Franklin "invented" daylight savings while in Paris shortly after our Revolutionary War.  Let's stop right here.  The facts are that Franklin authored an anonymous "letter" that starts this way:

To THE AUTHORS of
The Journal of Paris

1784

MESSIEURS,

You often entertain us with accounts of new discoveries. Permit me to communicate to the public, through your paper, one that has lately been made by myself, and which I conceive may be of great utility. ---- and concludes ----

I say it is impossible that so sensible a people, under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known, that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing. I am, &c.

A SUBSCRIBER

In this letter Franklin suggests four laws to be adopted:

"I believe all who have common sense, as soon as they have learnt from this paper that it is daylight when the sun rises, will contrive to rise with him; and, to compel the rest, I would propose the following regulations;

First. Let a tax be laid of a louis per window, on every window that is provided with shutters to keep out the light of the sun.

Second. Let the same salutary operation of police be made use of, to prevent our burning candles, that inclined us last winter to be more economical in burning wood; that is, let guards be placed in the shops of the wax and tallow chandlers, and no family be permitted to be supplied with more than one pound of candles per week.

Third. Let guards also be posted to stop all the coaches, &c. that would pass the streets after sunset, except those of physicians, surgeons, and midwives.

Fourth. Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing; and if that is not sufficient?, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest."  (read the full letter here - it is pretty funny)

Mr. Hudson of New Zealand 1896

The real "culprit" in Daylight Savings appears to be a New Zealander named Hudson who was a bug collector and golfer and each so after work so it occurred to him that if the clocks were re-arranged an hour he would have an hour more daylight after work to pursue his passion.

During WWI, the Germans and their buddies adopted DST to conserve coal (?) figuring that the rescheduling of things would conserve the resource. The adoption of DST was, after the War, spotty and didn't really pop again until WWII and return during the energy crisis in the early 70s.

It isn't a long time tradition. It wasn't invented by Franklin. A fellow who set his clock "forward" in the fall and not the spring (south of the equator remember) so he could collect bugs and play golf was the inspiration. The constant observance of it is only about 40 years old. 

Set your clock forward tonight with the certain knowledge that you, like me, had your head filled with a lot of stuff that is a good story but isn't necessarily true.