Why everyone’s talking about... The clocks going forward

So I remembered to put my clocks forward last night – as if I hadn’t lost enough sleep already this week! But what’s the point?

To get the most out of our hours of daylight. Putting clocks forward was originally suggested in 1895 by New Zealander George Hudson as he wanted more sunshine after work to indulge his passion: insect-collecting. Independently, London builder William Willett proposed that clocks be nudged forward by 20 minutes in each of the four weeks of April, partly to stop his games of golf being curtailed by failing light.

These don’t seem to be the strongest reasons for all the faff.

Maybe that’s why the idea was slow to take off. It was only widely adapted during the First World War, when the German empire put clocks forward to save on power for their war effort. Britain and the Allies soon followed.

So everyone loved it?

No, farmers generally hated it. Indeed, many people think it unnecessary and that, instead, people should wake an hour earlier. When British Summer Time was first proposed, the journal Nature sarcastically suggested that temperature readings could also be increased by ten degrees in the winter.

Does every nation put clocks forward?

About 70 do. In the US its introduction was especially messy, with different towns and even companies allowed to make their own rules until the 1960s. In one year, Iowa had 23 different start and end dates for what Americans call ‘daylight savings’, according to David Prerau’s book Seize The Daylight. One 35-mile bus route between Ohio and West Virginia went through seven different time zones during its one-hour journey.

Any other problems?

Certainly. Trains have crashed as they’ve been on different times. It also affects our biological clock: judges who suffer sleep deprivation from clock changes tend to issue longer sentences. And three Palestinian terrorists blew themselves up when the clocks went back in 1999 because t i me- bombs t hey were taking to plant on Israeli buses exploded an hour early.

So is it, erm, time, we ditched the clock changes?

We tried. In 1968 we started an illfated three-year experiment to use BST all year round, calling it British Standard Time. But there were more accidents in the mornings and some MPs disliked the way it tied us to Europe. Plus ça change…