Daylight Saving - A Joke!

Why do we have daylight saving time?

Ben Franklin's Joke

Writer, inventor and American founding father Ben Franklin is often credited (or blamed) for starting daylight saving time. He apparently joked that the people of Paris should be home and in bed as soon as the sun set because horse-drawn coaches -- taxis -- should be banned from the streets at night. He took his facetiousness further by saying the citizens of the City of Lights should be awakened every morning by a blast of cannon fire, and that anyone shuttering their windows from sunrise would be taxed

Franklin was writing with his well-known dry wit. He loved Paris and traveled there frequently. But somehow, his suggestions about going to bed early and rising early planted the notion that he was behind this whole business of changing our clocks to match the sunrise and sunset.

In reality, Englishman William Willett, an avid outdoorsman, gets the credit for all this clock adjusting. The Victorian-era builder and pamphleteer felt that people were missing the best part of every summer day and argued strongly for daylight saving. One of the primary points of his argument was that adjusting our clocks would save money and resources since people would be using artificial lights less if they were up and working when the Sun was up.

Article Link: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=BNDaylightSavingTime&GT1=27004

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