Mar 14
How Benjamin Franklin Jokingly Invented Daylight Saving Time
Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili
In 1784, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to the publishers of The Journal of Paris. The whole thing was a bit of a laugh–a story about how a sudden noise woke the diplomat at the six in the morning, startled to discover that there was light outside at that earlier hour. Upon further investigation via the almanac (something that Franklin knew a thing or two about), he found that, indeed, it gets light earlier in the morning, as we push forward to summer.
Perhaps, he reasoned, forcing the citizens of Paris to awaken earlier would help curb the burdensome expense of lighting homes that everyone seemed to be complaining about. Franklin offered a few tongue-in-cheek solutions to the problem, including stationing soldiers in front of candle stores to limit sales, keeping non-emergency cars off the street after sunset, and using either church bells or cannons to rouse the sleeping at dawn. The whole thing would require some getting used to, he reasoned, but that transition would likely only take a couple of days.
Of course, Franklin was just having a bit of fun with the whole thing. Back then people were more or less working on their own schedules. It wasn’t until the railways really entered the picture that time standardization became a serious concern across broad geographies.
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