However, most returned back to standard time after the war, with Daylight Saving Time relegated to a wartime phenomenon. Seeing sense in the idea, other countries across Europe began to adopt the same practice. This was two years into World War I, and the logic was to reduce the use of artificial lighting, to save fuel and energy for the war effort. The first countries to utilise Daylight Saving Time were Germany and Austria, who both implemented the policy on April 30, 1916. In 1908, residents of Porto Arthur in Ontario decided to change their clocks to make better use of the daylight hours during spring and summer. Various other regions in Canada soon followed their example, starting with Winnipeg and Brandon in 1916. It was a region of Canada that was the first to actually implement Daylight Saving Time. Although there was interest in all of these ideas, they were never followed through.
Later, in 1895, New Zealand scientist George Vernon Hudson proposed changing the clocks by two hours every spring, to give him more daylight hours to collect and examine insects. In 1907 British builder William Willett suggested implementing a clock shift to save energy. In 1784, following the advent of the pendulum clock and other more accurate timekeeping devices, the polymath Benjamin Franklin proposed the idea of moving waking hours to align better with daylight hours. In a satirical letter to The Journal of Paris, he suggested people should wake up earlier in summer to save money on candles and lamp oil, after observing city-dwellers sleeping late into the morning, and missing out on daytime hours. The concept of setting the clock forward and back to reflect the fluctuations of the seasons and daylight has a long history, stretching all the way to the Romans, who used water to measure time, adjusting their scales throughout the year according to solar movements. The origins of Daylight Saving Time (DST) If you've ever wondered why we change the clocks twice a year - and if we'll carry on doing so forevermore - here's a brief explainer. It's been a practice on and off in Germany and other countries around the world for over 100 years, but to some expats it comes as a bit of a surprise: every year at the end of March and October, people set their clocks forward and back one hour, to implement what's known as Daylight Saving Time.