A Brief History of (Fake) Time

The original idea of daylight saving time (DST) is often credited to—or blamed upon, depending on one’s perspective—Benjamin Franklin. While it’s true the creator of Poor Richard’s Almanack did write a satirical essay on how much candle wax Parisians could save by rising and retiring with the sun, his impish solution was not to shift the clocks but to enforce his penny-pinching via such means as rationing candles, taxing shutters on windows, forbidding carriage movements after dark and firing cannon and ringing church bells at sunrise.

No, it was Englishman William Willett in 1907 who first conceived the idea of shifting everyone’s clocks so they arose earlier in April than they did in September, saving the money that would otherwise be spent on artificial lighting and extending the long lazy hours of recreation into summer’s evenings. (He was an avid golfer.) So struck was he by his genius that he spent much of his own fortune in publicizing the idea and lobbying Parliament.

But it wasn’t until 1916, a year after Willett’s death, that “Summer Time” was officially enacted—and then only because the Germans had already done so to increase factory production and save coal as part of their First World War effort. Refusing to give their enemies the advantage of time, England hastily followed suit and the remainder of the combatants joined in, with the United States last to adopt the policy in 1918.

The program was considered so successful that it was reinstated and even doubled for World War II, with the English adoption of “double Summer Time” which sprang forward two hours in April and fell back only one in September. The U.S., not to be outdone, left DST in effect for over three years. It became federal law in 1966, and we’ve enjoyed it, or been stuck with it, ever since.

The Farming Fallacy

Many individuals seem to be of the opinion that DST was adopted to assist farmers, but this is a truly urban myth. Plants, cows, tractors and other farm features aren’t particularly concerned with the hour of the day unless it’s feeding time, and therefore farmers aren’t too psyched by it, either. In fact, farmers tend to oppose DST as a needless complication in their sun-dominated lives.

The original goal of DST was to reduce the need for artificial lighting and therefore the amount of energy consumed by urban workers during evening hours. Some corroboration for the theory was finally offered in 1975 by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which oversees DST as part of interstate commerce. The results of their study concluded that DST might save 1% of electricity usage in March and April, but nobody was really certain, and studies on other fuel usage were not attempted.

A more recent study was performed in Indiana, which didn’t entirely adopt DST until 2005. University of California, Santa Barbara, scientists studied power usage changes in those areas springing forward for the first time and found that, instead of conserving energy and saving money, DST actually costs area residents an additional $8.6 million each year in utility bills, as well as increasing power station and automotive emissions.

The Dirty Little Secret

The reason’s simple. Although electric lights may not be used during those long summer evenings, the air conditioner will be, and it gobbles far more electricity than a few bulbs. So do the television, the stereo, the computer, the microwave and all those other modern high-tech gadgets that weren’t in such common usage at the time of the 1975 study. In addition, having those extra hours of summer daylight tempts many people to go driving after work—to the mall, the ballpark, the golf course, the park, the beach—racking up summer gasoline usage with gallons that might otherwise have been saved.

Sporting goods manufacturers, the leisure industry, gasoline stations, retailers and convenience stores all love DST. Every time Congress extends summer another month, it’s estimated to earn an extra $200 million in sales for the golf industry and another $100 million for BBQ grills and charcoal.

But it doesn’t save energy. And for the U.S. government to make DST a mandatory part of our energy policy is ironic at best.