Daylight Savings Essay

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Daylight savings, the thing that rewards us with an extra hour of sleep in the fall, and what makes us have to wake up one painful hour earlier in the spring. As most of you probably know, we switched our clocks behind for an hour last week. But, why though? We all have most likely heard that daylight savings was created for the benefit of farmers, but that is incorrect. Contrary to popular belief, farmers do not benefit from daylight savings, they are negatively affected by it. Without the extra hour of morning light gone, they would have to rush in order to get their crops to the markets on time. Many farmers view the idea as inconvenient because they have to wake up with the sun no matter what time the clocks say. A change in time would …show more content…

In the book, Willett wrote that there was sunlight for a few hours when in the morning before people woke up, and only was up for a few hours of the day. He argued that if we changed the clocks in the spring we could save money on artificial light and enjoy more sunlight during the summer. Throughout his life, Willett would lobby to the British parliament to try to get them to adopt his idea. Shortly after his death, Germany became the first country to adopt daylight savings time in 1916 during World War 1 to try to save energy. Shortly after the United States entered the war, we adopted daylight savings time, in 1918, to try to consume energy. When the war ended, the practice of daylight savings time had many opponents, none larger than the farmers, so America got rid of it. The policy wasn’t reinstated until the next world war in 1942. However this transition was not perfect. For example, New York city observed a metropolitan daylight savings time all along. With the city being the financial capital of the country, many other cities followed too. There was confusion to what time it would be because many cities followed daylight savings time, and the rural areas around it often times would not. Finally in 1966, president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Uniform time act, which required for states to either adopt daylight savings time for six months of the year, or to completely opt

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