Time to wind back
“Spring forward, fall back.”
Or, in other words, as we move forward into the cooler autumn months, time will go backwards (by an hour) this weekend with the end of daylight saving at 3am tomorrow.
That means before bed tonight, people across the country will be resetting the time on their clocks and watches (and probably leaving the one in the car because it’s just too complicated and looking forward to an hour’s lie-in.
As you lie in bed, savouring that extra hour before you actually have to get up and do something or be somewhere, spare a thought for George Hudson — the Kiwi responsible for your extra hour of sleep.
Back in 1895, Hudson was a post office employee by day and a keen amateur entomologist (insect enthusiast) outside work hours.
It was in the final hours of daylight, after he finished work for the day, when was able to spend time seeking out and collecting a wide range of bugs. The problem for him and his peers, however, was those hours weren’t long and plentiful.
In 1895, he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society suggesting a two-hour daylight-saving shift in time to create lighter evenings for hobbyists such as himself to utilise. While his idea got some support, it wasn’t enough to initiate any official appetite for change.
In his birthplace of England, however, Hudson’s idea was gaining some traction.
There, builder (and greatgrandfather of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin) William Willett published a pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight in 1907, in which he proposed clocks should
be advanced by 20 minutes each week in April, making a total of 80 minutes of time change, and then reversed in the same way in September. He argued this would create lighter evenings, saving a few million pounds in lighting costs, and would prevent people “wasting daylight”. His idea gained support from many, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill, but was still rejected by the British Government of the time.
The outbreak of World War I saw his idea back in favour due to the need to save coal.
Willett’s much-publicised campaigning got the attention of Germany and Austria, and driven by a need to save coal and candles, as well as extending the working day to help the war effort, the two countries introduced Daylight Saving Time in 1916. A few weeks later Britain followed suit, and enacted a change of one hour to clock times as a wartime production-boosting device under the Defence of the Realm Act.
But for Hudson it wasn’t until 1927 — 32 years after he had first suggested the idea — that Daylight Saving Time was finally introduced in New Zealand.
So this weekend, as daylight saving time ends (until September 24 ), spare a thought for Hudson and his bugs, and remember to turn your clocks back, check your smoke alarm batteries and enjoy that extra hour of sleep.