You can thank Benjamin Franklin when your alarm clock blares an hour earlier on Sunday morning. Franklin was the first to propose a form of Daylight Saving Time in 1784, in keeping with his famous aphorism, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
The idea wouldn’t become reality until the early 1900s, despite several proposals along the way. In 1895, New Zeland entomologist George Vernon Hudson proposed a two-hour time shift to the Wellington Philosophical Society. Ten more years would elapse before William Willett, an English builder, suggested that the clock be advanced during summer months. Finally, in 1916, during World War I, several countries in Europe adopted Daylight Saving Time. The United States followed their lead in 1918.
Learn how to “spring forward” into Daylight Saving Time this year:
Not true
Ben Franklin is often credited with promoting DST. He wrote of the concept in a SATIRE article in 1784… the key word: SATIRE.