The next time you are bothered by daylight savings — maybe during that short window when the sun comes up a little later, or the longer one when it doesn’t set until after nine — you can blame William Boyce Thompson. The Magnate was instrumental in the short-lived implementation of daylight savings time during WWI, according to his biographer, Hermann Hagedorn. The Yale poet wrote to Senator William Calder (R-N.Y.), author of the Standard Time Act of 1918, to confirm the rumor.
“It is a fact that I introduced in the Senate a bill that became a law at the suggestion of Colonel Thompson,” Calder wrote back, “and while it is a fact that I received a great deal of assistance from many sources, notably the active cooperation of President Wilson, it is also true that no one worked as enthusiastically and effectively for the bill as did the Colonel. I recall distinctly that through the instrumentality of the Press Associations he was able to obtain the aid of practically all of the weekly newspapers in the United States.
“I think it can fairly be said that no one contributed more to putting this legislation through than did William Boyce Thompson,” Calder wrote.
Some provisions of the Standard Time Act, also known as the Calder Act, survived longer than others. While Congress repealed daylight savings the following year — it was unpopular initially, and in fact, some people would still like to have it eighty-sixed — the initial law also established the country’s five time zones that are more or less the same today. The International Commerce Commission implemented the zones along the lines of ones previously established by the National Railroad System.
The original act, motivated by a wartime need to save fuel, dictated that, on the last Sunday of March each year, the clock be advanced an hour and then returned an hour on the last Sunday of October. The United States followed the lead of Germany, which implemented the measure in 1916 to save energy during the war.
William Thompson didn’t invent the concept, to be sure. Some historians credit Benjamin Franklin with conjuring up the idea. Others believe the credit should go to George Vernon Hudson, a New Zealand postal worker and amateur entomologist who proposed the concept in 1895.
In the United States, daylight savings was reinstituted in 1942 in a second attempt to save energy during the war. The next couple of decades were a free-for-all — states and localities switched between DST and standard time (ST) at will. Then, in an attempt to end the clock chaos, Congress in 1966 passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized daylight savings time, along with its start and end dates, across the country. The law left an exception for Hawaii and Arizona, which opted to keep standard time year-round.
During the energy crisis of 1974, lawmakers tried to make Daylight Savings Time permanent. Enthusiasm dissipated after the first winter of dark mornings, and the act was repealed. In recent years, U.S. lawmakers, including Colorado Governor Jared Polis, have reopened the conversation about shifting to permanent daylight savings time. The Senate recently unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would put an end to the semiannual changing of the clocks. But the bill died in the House.
The act would lead to later sunrises and sunsets during the six months in which most of the U.S. currently observes standard time. While more evening sun may sound nice, many experts — including Professor Ken Wright, director of the University of Colorado’s Sleep and Chronobiology Lab — disagree with the proposal.
“If you look at the expert consensus from the scientific societies that focus on sleep, health and circadian rhythms, all of them agree this is a bad idea,” Wright, a sleep scientist, told a CU publication. “Yes, we should be getting rid of the time change. But the science suggests we should be sticking with standard time, not daylight saving time.”
More sunlight in the evenings comes at the price of less morning light — a dangerous trade-off, according to Wright. Dark mornings mean sleepier commuters, icier roads, and more school children walking to school or waiting for the bus before the sun comes up, he maintained.
Even extra evening sun is a cause for concern. Wright explained: “When we get exposed to light at night, that sends a signal to our circadian clock that we should go to bed later and wake up later. Later sleep timing is associated with more substance use and physical and mental health problems, including obesity, depression and heart disease.”
And so, the storied history of daylight saving time continues.