Spring forward with 'Seize the Daylight'
By John Wihbey, USA TODAY
For all those who have been puzzled to find themselves late for church the first Sunday in April or embarrassingly early the last Sunday in October, David Prerau's Seize the Daylight (Thunder's Mouth Press, $23) finally provides some answers. The book is one of the first histories of daylight-saving time, published without an hour to spare before the clocks spring ahead Sunday.
A computer scientist, Prerau did government research on the question during the 1970s oil embargo but drew a blank when he went looking for the historical background of daylight-saving time. "I found that nobody knew anything about it," he says.
Prerau begins by tracing daylight-saving time's origins to Ben Franklin in the mid-18th century and to William Willett, who advocated the idea without success in Britain as an energy conservation measure in the early 20th century. By adjusting the clock, he reasoned, people could reduce the need for fuel to produce artificial light — a reason that still applies 100 years later.
Seize the Daylight explains how the world wars and 1970s energy crisis forced people to accept clock-altering as a way of maximizing daylight during the hours people tend to be active. In World War I, the Germans first embraced the idea to save energy, prompting the British and Americans to follow suit and "get up early to beat the Kaiser," Prerau recounts.
The war was won, but soon there was what Prerau calls "clock chaos" nationwide. At one point, for example, Iowa had 23 combinations of start and end dates for daylight-saving time — and, almost comically, clocks differed between the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Even today, Arizona, Hawaii and parts of Indiana don't follow daylight-saving time because of exemptions allowed under federal law.
Prerau acknowledges that he, too, still needs a little reminder to reset his clock: "Sometimes it's at the last minute, but usually I've done it."