As the winter solstice approaches, the hours of daylight are getting shorter. The annual confusion of changing clocks for daylight savings time change upon us.
According to timeanddate.com, the first regional use of daylight savings time was in Thunder Bay, Ontario. In 1916 in Germany was the first country to implement daylight savings time. The idea of setting time back an hour was originally to save energy during war time.
Even though it has only been called daylight savings for a few hundred years, the concept of changing daily schedules according to the sun has been around for a long time. Before the clock and electricity was invented, people had no choice but to adjust their daily schedule around the daylight hours.
Today the concept of changing time is still the same, to give the people an extra hour of daylight when they would be more likely to use it in the afternoon rather than sleep through it. Many people believe that it is for farming. Farmers make up a very small percent of the population so it seems absurd that the whole country would change for them.
The reasons for daylight savings are a topic of of debate today. Despite popular belief, it is not for the farmers, they would actually prefer to not have daylight savings time. It is not to save energy, it is for business. An extra hour of daylight keeps customers going to stores later so they get more business.
This weekend on Nov. 6 at 2 a.m. be sure to set your clocks back an hour and take advantage of that extra hour of sleep!