When is daylight saving time? All your questions answered

“There was a threat of federal intervention in all of this, so the railroads decided they were going to police themselves,” said Carlene Stephens, curator at the National Museum of American History. Scientists also call for a standardized timekeeping system, she said.

In North America, a coalition of businessmen and scientists decided on time zones and, in 1883, the United States and Canada railroads adopted four (East, Central, Mountain and Pacific) to speed up service. The change was not universally welcomed. Evangelical Christians were among the strongest opponents, arguing that “the time came from God and the railroads shouldn’t mess with him,” said Stephens.

The introduction of time zones has raised fears of a sort of 19th century Y2K. “Jewelers were busy yesterday answering questions from onlookers, many of whom seemed to think that the change in time would generally create a sensation, a business shutdown and some kind of disaster, the nature of which could not be determined precisely, ”The New York Times reported in November 1883.

After the time zone was resolved, it wasn’t long before Franklin’s idea of ​​daylight saving time was reshaped for the industrial world. In the 1900s, an English builder, William Willet, asked British lawmakers to change clocks to reap economic benefits. Parliament rejected the proposal in 1909, only to adopt it a few years later under the pressure of World War I. In 1916, Germany was the first European nation to enact the policy in an effort to cut energy costs, and in the years that followed several Western nations followed suit. In the United States, the federal government began to supervise time zones in 1918. And in March of that year, the country lost its first hour of sleep.

But why?

One of the oldest arguments for daylight saving time is that it can save energy costs. There are many conflicting studies on whether it really exists.

A 2008 Department of Energy report found that the extended daylight saving time signed by George W. Bush in 2005 saved about 0.5 percent in total electricity use per day. Also that year, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the change in daylight saving time, “contrary to policy intent,” increased demand for residential electricity by about 1 percent, increasing Indiana’s electricity bills by $ 9 million a year and increasing pollution emissions.

But daylight saving time still has fervent advocates, especially among business advocates who argue that it helps boost the economy.