In April 1916, the German Empire moved its clocks forward by one hour.
The reason was coal. The war was consuming it at a rate that was beginning to alarm the relevant ministries, and an hour of shifted daylight meant an hour less of artificial lighting in the evening, which meant coal saved, which meant shells produced, which meant the war could continue. The logic was impeccable. The emergency was genuine. The measure was explicitly temporary.
Britain, observing that its enemy had implemented a sensible efficiency measure, implemented the same measure within weeks. The United States followed in 1918. The cows — who had not been consulted — objected. Farmers, who had been equally unconsulted, pointed out that their hired hands went home at five o’clock regardless of what the clocks said, and that the cows’ milking schedules were regulated by biology rather than parliamentary legislation. This observation was received with great courtesy and promptly set aside.
When the war ended, all parties agreed the measure was no longer necessary and discontinued it.
That was 1918.
The Second Emergency
The measure lay dormant for approximately twenty-three years, at which point a second emergency presented itself. The Second World War required coal and fuel with the same institutional urgency as the first. Both sides reintroduced the clock change. Both sides discontinued it when the war ended.
This time, however, several countries forgot to synchronise their forgetting.
The United States entered what historians of timekeeping describe, with admirable restraint, as “the chaos of time.” Individual states and municipalities were permitted to regulate their own clock changes. By 1965, the state of Iowa alone had managed to produce twenty-three different start and end times for Daylight Saving within its borders. The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul — separated by a river but sharing, one might reasonably assume, a basic orientation toward the calendar — observed different times for two weeks each year.
Congress intervened with the Uniform Time Act of 1966, establishing the framework still in use today. The word “temporary” does not appear in the legislation.
The Third Emergency
In December 1973, President Nixon signed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act.
The word “Emergency” appeared in the title. This was considered sufficient acknowledgement of the measure’s exceptional nature.
The context was the 1973 oil crisis. Nixon stated the measure would conserve approximately 150,000 barrels of oil per day during winter months. The logic was, once again, impeccable. The emergency was, once again, genuine.
Eight months later, after children began arriving at school in the dark and a television commentator coined the phrase “Daylight Disaster Time,” Congress quietly discontinued it.
The underlying framework remained.
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Join Now →What the Measure Has Now Been Solving for 110 Years
The coal shortage of 1916 was resolved in 1918.
The coal shortage of 1942 was resolved in 1945.
The oil crisis of 1973 was resolved, more or less, by 1976.
Studies on whether Daylight Saving Time actually saves meaningful quantities of energy have produced findings that the relevant authorities have received with great equanimity. A study in Indiana — which moved to universal Daylight Saving Time in 2006 — found that electricity consumption increased following the change, as air conditioning demands in the morning offset the projected evening savings. Multiple sleep medicine associations have issued position papers recommending abolition of the practice on public health grounds. The rate of cardiac events rises measurably in the days following the spring clock change. Traffic accidents increase. Workplace injuries increase.
These findings have been received with the same institutional equanimity as all previous findings.
A Brief Note on William Willett
There is an alternative history, popular in British accounts, in which Daylight Saving Time was invented by a London builder named William Willett, who in 1905 noticed that his neighbours’ blinds were still drawn on a fine morning and spent the next ten years lobbying Parliament about it.
Willett was a genuine enthusiast. His pamphlet, The Waste of Daylight, proposed advancing the clocks by eighty minutes over four successive Sundays in April. He died in 1915, one year before Germany moved its clocks, having never seen his idea adopted.
He is, in the Anglophone tradition, credited with the invention.
This is a version of history in which an Edwardian gentleman’s passion for morning sunlight produced one of the most persistent regulatory frameworks in the modern world. It is a more charming story than “wartime German coal management adopted by occupying forces and never repealed.”
Both versions are technically accurate. One of them is more commonly taught.
Epilogue
Last week, the United States House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 48 to 1 to advance the Sunshine Protection Act — a bill that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent. President Trump has stated he will work very hard to see it signed into law.
The coal shortage that prompted the original measure concluded 108 years ago.
The cows remain unimpressed.
The Maier Files has a particular interest in measures introduced during emergencies that outlive the emergencies that introduced them. Those who have been following along will recognise the pattern. Those who haven’t — there is more, if you’d like to look.
