Saving the Daylight: Why We Put the Clocks Forward

Summary

Benjamin Franklin conceived of it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endorsed it. Winston Churchill campaigned for it. Kaiser Wilhelm first employed it. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt went to war with it. Every spring, the clocks go forward, and every autumn they go back. Saving the Daylight explores for the first time the contentious, and often entertaining, story of this deceptively simple attempt to regulate the sunlight hours. Throughout its surprisingly controversial history, DST has been claimed to impact a wide variety of diverse and often unexpected areas, including agricultural practices, the reporting of sports scores, street crime, voter turnout and many other, sometime unexpected aspects of daily life. The book brings together the historical, political, and technical aspects of the fascinating story behind the movement for DST, with many lighter and offbeat anecdotes.