A MATTER OF
TIME The clocks go forward this month, but what does it all mean?
W
hat started with a throwaway remark in 1784 has influenced our lives for more than 100 years. But although one of America’s Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, observed on a visit to France that Parisiennes should be woken an hour earlier by cannons and church bells, the concept of Daylight Saving Time (DST) – or as it is more widely-known British Summer Time – did not gain traction until 1895 when a New Zealand scientist, George Vernon Hudson, proposed to his government that the clocks should go forward by two hours every summer. Although he was unsuccessful, an English builder, William Willett, began lobbying Parliament in 1907 to alter the clocks to create more hours of daylight in the
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PROPERTY NEWS
summer. Although cynics sniped it was to allow Willett more time to play golf and ride out, he argued we were frittering away natural light by rising at the same time in the summer as in the darker days of winter. He advocated putting clocks forward of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) by 80 minutes (20 minutes at a time during April) and reversing it in similar stages throughout September. But it wasn’t until the spring of 1916, a year after his death, that Willett’s proposal was adopted - and then only by an hour – as wartime governments around Europe tried to cut fuel consumption and increase productivity. Incidentally, Willett is the greatgreat-grandfather of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who co-wrote the track Clocks for the group’s album, A Rush Of Blood To The Head. A nod to his ancestor, perhaps? Anyway, apart from a spell during, and immediately after, the second World War when they were brought forward two hours to avoid fuel shortages, that’s the way it stayed until 1968 when Britain spent three years in DST.
