welcome everyone I'm CW at the bth andt library and today is September 10th 2024 and we are at the height of hurricane season here in Florida we just have two seasons Christmas season and hurricane season apparently Christmas season now starts with Halloween and that starts the first week of August but today we're going to look back at the crap we go through every fall and spring that's right we're going to examine who in fact is directly responsible for this idea of daylight savings trust me when I say the answer will surprise you I don't know about you but myself and my wife we grew up remembering that we set our clocks back to suit the farmers thinking about that most Farmers we knew didn't need clocks they had roosters to wake them up and at the first sight of daylight so pretty much Farmers didn't care about the time of day especially if they had cows that needed to be milked so where the hell did this come from there's no short answer so I'll start in the middle a scientist by the name of George Nelson excuse me George Hudson in New Zealand in 1895 introduced the idea of moving the clock's back by two hours hours for wait for it he needed more sunlight to collect bugs that's right he was an enologist I guess that was easier than using a flashlight why worry about the price of batteries when you can piss off everyone else in your country well next up with this idea William Willet a man greatly involved in construction and cheesers in the United Kingdom he outlined his plan to manipulate time in a pamplet called the waste of daylight so his plan in 1907 was to push all the clocks forward by 20 minutes at 2 a.m. on four consecutive Sundays in April I don't know why this didn't take off then in fall in September do the exact opposite with the time pieces at 2 am on four straight Sundays who's going to do all that there was thankfully a different plan later when it could be just simply moved the clocks one hour forward in Spring reversing the clocks back in the fall so that didn't work until 1916 but it wasn't the British that employed this idea first no nine it was the Germans yeah on April 6th 1916 in the MST of a war the Great War in hopes of saving energy gasoline oil everything else the federal Council of Germany instituted DST or daylight savings time the United Kingdom follows suit and the United States did likewise but not until March 19th 1918 according to the United States Department of Transportation yeah that's the part of our government that is in charge of our time literally sites that a state chooses to observe DST those states must begin and end on federally mandated dates also under the United excuse me uniform time act I didn't even know we had such a thing like that either that the states have right to ex uh exempt themselves from daylight savings time however no state has the authority to be selected on permanent daylight savings time now in the United States there's a number of states that are working to end this ritual get rid of it completely namely Maine Massachusetts Minnesota New York Oklahoma Pennsylvania South Carolina Tennessee Vermont and Oregon they're all busy legislatively trying to end this time manipulation even Texas their represented voted 138 to5 to end day light savings time back in 2023 okay so I've pointed out the ideas from the late 19th century and the early 20th century but the idea of saving daylight was mentioned much further back in Europe an American uh employed by the US government took to the pen and wrote a letter to the jel de Perry I guess that's the Paris Journal whatever suggesting that parisians Rose alarmingly so very late in the day and because of staying up late throughout the night he pointed out that the French wasted most of their morning hours on sleep and he could they could make better use of their time and daylight hours by rising up from their bed sooner uh this Ambassador wrote that the French namely the citizens of Paris could save a bundle of money in candles if the people of the city would just adjust their hours and get up with the Sun the writer of the letter suggested the use of church bells to be rang promptly as soon as the sun peaked right over the crest or if that didn't work let's bring out some cannons the military units fire those blank cannons right down the street to wake up and jar those parisians out of their beds and out of their Slumber this would allow them to enjoy more of the day and more of the daylight wink wink the writer and Ambassador was Dr Benjamin Franklin in 1784 several years after the end of the Revolutionary War and most importantly when Dr Franklin wrote this letter he wrote it as a joke mind you a little bit of s you know satire he wasn't any more serious about rising up any earlier than the French women he was partying with in their salons Tick Tock by the way that's a not a beauty shop that's just a place to have a conversation so be cautious of your words sometimes something happens and so when two or three hundred years goes by you're getting blamed for writing something you thought was a joke and you have an Institute trying to push the responsibility to a bug guy New Zealand later on well if you enjoy this little bit of content and I hope you did and I would want and you'd like to see more please subscribe if you're already seen some of these Please Subscribe again like and by all means uh write in any comments you feel I I love comments That's History though and it's all in the past see you tomorrow when we talk about today especially you AJ and will