Daylight Saving Time
Daylight Saving Time (DST) is an accepted part of our lifestyle in much of the world. We put the clocks forward an hour in the spring and back again in the autumn. Apart from enjoying the extra hour's sleep in autumn and complaining about jetlag during spring, we rarely think about it.Daylight Saving Time is in fact - like most time standards - a relatively recent invention. The objective is simple: to maximise the number of hours of daylight that we use productively. This not only has economic advantages - lesss energy is required during daylight - but is also good on a human level as it maximises the amount of time for which we get to see the sun.
The first suggestion for DST came in 1907 when William Willett attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the British government to implement the idea. Daylight Saving Time was not actually introduced until the First World War when it was clearly advantageous. Germany implemented the system first in 1916, followed by the UK later that year then the US in 1918. The US law was unpopular and quickly repealed, reinstated temporarily during WWII then permanently from 1966.
Not all countries around the world use DST and those that do don't always use it for the same periods of the year. This means that at certain times of the year the time difference between different countries can vary by an hour or even two from the usual differential. To make things even more complicated, some nations have experimented with "Double Daylight Time" where the clocks are shifted by two hours instead of one.
For all its apparent advantages, DST remains confusing and controversial with some groups campaigning to have it scrapped.
British Summer Time
In the UK, Daylight Saving Time is known as "British Summer Time" (BST). It is often proposed that we should move permanently from GMT to BST all year round. Such a move would bring the UK in line with much of Europe and make life easier for business. However it is fiercely opposed by many people in Scotland where the winter days are much shorter than in England.
External Links:
US DST Schedule