Who came up with the idea of daylight savings time?
Saving daylight was first mentioned in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin in a satirical essay[1] urging Parisians to get up earlier in order to use sunlight, thus saving wax by not burning candles at night, in the spirit of his proverb “Early to bed and early to rise / Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”[2] Franklin did not mention Daylight Saving Time—he did not propose that clock time be changed. DST was first seriously proposed in 1907 by William Willett,[3] but he was unable to get the British government to adopt it, despite considerable lobbying. DST was first put into practice by a national government in Germany during the First World War, between April 30, 1916 and October 1, 1916. Shortly afterward, the United Kingdom followed suit, first adopting it between May 21 and October 1, 1916. On June 17, 1917, Newfoundland became the first North American jurisdiction to adopt DST with the passing of the Daylight Saving Act of 1917. On March 19, 1918, the US Congress formally established
