Clocks set to change with season, but why do we ‘fall back’ to GMT?
IT’S that time of year again when nights start to draw in.
After a glorious summer, winter will soon be upon us.
Clocks change from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time on the last Sunday of October every year in the UK. In 2018 this is October 28, when the clocks will go BACK one hour at 2am.
So, we get an hour extra in bed on that Sunday, but sunset will be an hour earlier for the next five months.
If you’re unsure which way the clocks go, just remember ‘Spring forward, fall back’.
But why do we make this change? The United States founding father Benjamin Franklin first had the idea to put the clocks forward during summer in 1784. If people got out of bed an hour earlier they’d get extra daylight, he said.
However, it wasn’t something that was properly introduced in the UK until 1916 – and many people opposed it.
One William Willett wrote a whole pamphlet on it in 1907 called ‘The Waste of Daylight’ about how people did not make full use of the daylight during summer.
He was also a keen golfer and wanted to continue playing in the evening – but he died in 1915, a year before it was introduced in the UK.
As long as your phone is connected to the internet via 4G or WiFi then the time will change on it automatically at 2am on October 28.
By December, the UK will get as little as seven hours and 40 minutes of sunlight each day.
The clocks go forward again on the last Sunday in March.