I hope you remembered to set your clocks back this weekend. Sunday at 2 a.m. marked the end of Daylight Saving Time and officially welcomed the dark months of winter to come. For most of us, the hour change is simply an extra hour of sleep or our one chance to travel back in time, but DST has had a more controversial history than most would assume. 

DST is often associated with Benjamin Franklin, but it was not proposed until 1895 by George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand. He presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society for a two-hour daylight shift because of the value he placed on after-hour’s daylight. 

Shortly after Hudson’s proposal, an English outdoorsman named William Willett also developed the DST idea after noticing how many Londoners slept through a majority of summer days. His proposal developed into a bill in 1908, but never turned into a law. Though each proposal never turned into a law under their jurisdiction, it wasn’t long until DST was first officially adopted. 

During World War I, Germany and its allies were the first to adopt DST in order to conserve coal during wartime. The rest of the countries involved in WWI soon followed suit with the United States agreeing to it in 1918. After wartime, DST was abandoned but made reappearances in several countries until the 1970’s when it was finally widely adopted. 

The reasoning behind DST was to utilize more daylight in the later part of the day during the summer and conserve electricity. People were assumed to forgo the daylight in the morning hours and require more electricity at night, but studies by the Department of Transportation revealed that DST did not conserve electricity. People apparently use the same amount of electricity regardless of whether not there are more hours of daylight at night. 

Nowadays, I don’t completely understand the continued use of DST. Look at it this way — when we set the clock forward in the spring, it is like were hitting the snooze button on the sun. On March 10 the sun was supposed to rise at 6:32 a.m. in Raleigh, but instead rose at 7:32 a.m. because that was the night we set our clocks forward an hour. Benjamin Franklin famously quoted, “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” It’s understandable that not everyone can get up that early, but we shouldn’t need an excuse as drastic as DST to account for it. 

Not even all 50 states abide by DST. Hawaii and Arizona have chosen to opt out of the national snooze button, which causes confusion during summer vacations when traveling to Phoenix or Honolulu. And all of the Asian countries continue to opt out of DST. 

Lastly, why does summer get to have all the fun whenwinter gets screwed? Instead of it getting dark at about 6 p.m. during the winter, it gets dark at 5 p.m. because DST doesn’t hold up all year round. We already suffer through with less daylight during the winter so why make it worse? 

I realize if DST were adopted during the winter it could also be called a permanent change because then we would never, “spring forward,” or “fall back,” but as soon as the first change is made it never has to be made again. 

Time is completely relative and something we’ve learned to abide by anyway, so why not make DST permanent and give winter back some of its daylight. Summer will still have its extended after-hours daylight, but winter can join the fun.