Daylight Saving Time was put into place during WWI for
energy conservation on the battlefield; not for farmers. Farmers have always
hated DST. It wasn’t started by Benjamin Franklin, either. In 1905, William
Willet was riding early one morning, and noticed most Londoners were still
asleep. They were missing the lovely morning sun. So, he proposed DST in his
pamphlet, “The Waste of Daylight.” William spent the rest of his life (and his
fortune) trying to promote the idea. He died in 1915, the year Germans
implemented DST to save coal. Britain did the same in 1916, and the U.S.
followed in 1918. Americans hated it so much that in 1919, the law was overturned.
It was left up to individual states to use DST or not. It got pretty messy,
especially where air travel was concerned. The Uniform Time Act was passed in
1966, mandating DST across the U.S. Somehow, Arizona and Hawaii opted out.
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