Daylight Savings Time

Daylight Saving Time went into effect in the United States for the first time on this date in 1918. Benjamin Franklin was the first person to come up with the idea of changing our clocks to take advantage of the longer days. He was serving as a delegate in Paris in 1784, and noticed that Parisians tended to sleep late in the mornings. He wrote a tongue-in-cheek essay arguing that sunlight was going to waste in the mornings and would be much more appreciated in the evenings. By changing the clocks and shifting the daylight hours later, he wrote, people could take advantage of more natural light and save money on candles and lamp oil.