From: Green, Simon (Simon.Green@EU.ALTRIA.COM)
Date: Mon Jan 05 2004 - 10:56:24 EST
Beats me. Ben Franklin was a smart man, so may well have come up with it
first. However...
The site I posted earlier states that it was invented by William Willett of
London, who published his idea (to much disdain) in 1907, and it was
implemented in the UK as a productivity aid for the war effort in 1916, and
adopted by other countries subsequently.
Wikipedia and several other places carry an article that states that
Franklin's letter on the subject (in the "Journal of Paris": I haven't found
a copy) was humorous and he was proposing that people should get up and go
to bed earlier, not that clocks should change.
The same article gives the credit to Willett, but reckons that it was first
implemented by Germany in WWI.
Germany 30/04/16
UK 21/05/16
USA 31/03/18 - ?/?/1919, then 2/09/42 - 30/09/45; 04/66.
(Some big gaps for the USA: those dates are for Federal law: what the
individual States did between 1945 and 1966 was their business. Hawaii
still doesn't operate DST, logically enough.)
Further reading - interesting piece at
http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin.html (and they DO have the
original letter there, apparently - leads me to conclude that Franklin did
publish the concept first - in 1784 - but only as a bit of whimsy, and for
the benefit of Parisians, not farmers. However, he probably inspired
others, leading eventually to Willett, who was the first to make a serious
proposal for it.
Of course, all that is taken from the Internet, so should all be regarded
with some scepticism.
Simon Green
Altria ITSC Europe Ltd
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Verzal [mailto:BVerzal@KOMATSUNA.COM]
> Sent: 05 January 2004 15:02
> To: aix-l@Princeton.EDU
> Subject: Re: Daylight Saving
>
>
> That is odd - we here in the USA are (perhaps better said -
> "I was") under
> the impression that Ben Franklin suggest DST as a way to get
> farmers more
> daylight way back when.
>
> Am I in error ?
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