DST dates back to the 1700 and Ben Franklin.
This is the only bad idea that Ben Franklin had.
Franklin was only being satirical when he wrote about Parisians being encouraged to get up with the sun and save on oil at night. He never actually proposed changing clocks.
Apparently it was a New Zealand entomologist, George Hudson, who proposed the time change. He wanted not just one but two more hours of light to hunt for insects. This was back in 1895. Hey, if we’re going for one, why not two or even three? Time-pikers!
In 1902, Englishman William Willet proposed 4 incremental time changes during April and reversed in September to Parliament, because he wanted more time for building houses (keep in mind, this wasn’t about how his workers felt about working in the summer heat). Happily, even though Winston Churchill liked the idea, Parliament wisely said no. Imagine 4 time changes in one month!
It wasn’t until Germany put it into practice after WWI (an attempt to save lives), that England and every other country which participated in WWI hopped on the DST bandwagon. Germany lost the first big land-grab but managed to win the war over all of its previous enemies’ circadian rhythms. Masterful! Btw, were there adverse affects on Dr. Who’s time travels?
Back to the USA. The sun rises and sets about the same time every day in Hawaii, which is why they gave up on DST. Arizona has plenty of daylight hours anyway and likes to have some of them during cooler temperatures which is why parts of that state don’t observe it. AZ also has two time zones. Must be fun doing business there.
Notice how not one of the serious time-change proponents had anything to do with agriculture. Farmers and ranchers are usually working either with or against the sun. Clocks don’t matter to animals that need milking. In hot states, morning hours tend to be cooler than late afternoon hours. When would you want to do the physical labor that has to be done outside?
Aside from all the pros and cons and my personal preference for standard time, I am grateful for DST on 9/11/2002. For once, it, in combination with regular time zones, did save thousands of lives all in the space of a few hours since the jihadists miscalculated their optimum time of destruction and murder. Since that mistake is unlikely to happen again, let’s return to giving the sun and our inner clocks their due time-wise.
President Ben Franklin invented DST. This is old news.