More than one hundred years later, in 1895, New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson suggested clocks be put forward two hours in the summer.Ĭlock-changing in Britain was spearheaded by builder William Willett – the great-great-grandfather of Coldplay’s Chris Martin. He wanted to save on candle usage and get people out of bed earlier. The idea of some sort of DST was first floated by Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US, in 1784. There was an experiment, between 19, which kept clocks one hour ahead of GMT all year round.īritain then reverted to our now familiar system of GMT in the winter and summer time in between March and October.
They were also brought forward for periods in the spring of 1947, in line with fuel shortages.
Since then, Britain toyed with moving the clocks a number of times, including bringing them forward two hours ahead of GMT during the Second World War. Though the sun had been up for hours as he rode his horse through Chislehurst and Petts Wood, people were still asleep in bed”.īritish Summer Time was adopted in Britain in 1916 to save fuel and money. Willett was “incensed at the ‘waste’ of useful daylight during the summer. The idea was proposed in Britain by builder William Willett, says Dr Richard Dunn, senior curator for the History of Science at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Moving the clocks forward in the summer months would give us darker mornings but lighter, longer evenings. The campaign for British Summer Time came about at the beginning of the 20th century. Why waste electricity when there is perfectly good daylight to be used? Initially it was rolled out to save energy and get people outside. The UK continues to use British Summer Time until the clocks go back (AFP/Getty Images) Why do we bother changing the clocks? This gives us an extra precious hour of daylight in the dark autumn and winter months, with the added bonus of an extra hour in bed on the Sunday morning when the clocks change. Just like in spring, the autumn switch comes on a set date, the final Sunday of October – this means that BST will come to an end this year on Sunday 25 October, at the same time. Last year, the clocks turned back at 2.00am on 27 October 2019 to set us back to GMT. Switching to BST, or Daylight Saving Time (DST), means we get more daylight in the evening but, as mentioned, your Sunday lie-in is cut slightly short.
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