Remember at 1.00am tomorrow morning, Sunday, our clocks here in Ireland will go forward by one hour, thus marking the official start of Irish Summer Time.
William Willett
Daylight Saving Time is instigated annually here in Ireland so as to make better use of our natural occurring daylight. So by putting clocks forward one hour during the Summer and one hour back again in the Autumn, same can be achieved. These same actions reduce considerable unnecessary energy consumption, while also saving countless lives, since fewer accidents occur in the mornings when compared to our darker evenings.
Tomorrow morning in the European Union, all time zones will change at the same moment.
DST or ‘Daylight Savings Time’ has been in use throughout much of the world including the U.S.A., Canada and Europe since World War I, when it was first established by the ‘Summer Time Act’ in 1916. However between 1940 and until July 1945, (during the Second World War), clocks were not put back an hour at the end of ‘Summer Time’ in a bid to save both fuel and public finance.
The idea of attempting to not waste our daylight came about following a campaign by the Edwardian British builder William Willett who lived in Chislehurst, Kent, England (Great-great-grandfather of co-founder, lead singer and songwriter Chris Martin of the band ‘Coldplay.’), former who strongly promoted this idea of time change in 1907. Annoyed by what he viewed as the continuous waste of daylight (Note Willett loved golfing in the evenings which may have also encouraged this notion of ‘Daylight Saving’.), he produced a promotional pamphlet called “The Waste of Daylight“.
During Willett’s own lifetime however no such change ever took place. It was not until one year, following his death from influenza at the age of 58, on March 4th 1915, that British Summer Time became a reality; beginning on May 21st 1916 and ending on October 1st, in an effort to improve output in factories and reduce the amount of coal used in particular for obtaining gas, used in public lighting.
Nice info, about summer time. George.