daylight saving time – sommerzeit

In our family, daylight saving time is a horror. (Paul claims that if Trump had promised to end daylight saving time, he would have voted for him.) The first day of the time-switch is always disorienting – you’re waking up an hour earlier than usual and then there’s no way of determining what time it is throughout the day. You look at the clock and are amazed that’s it’s 7:30. What! What the fuck happened to late afternoon and why is it still light out?
 
a brief history
William Sword Frost, mayor of Orillia, Ontario, introduced daylight saving time in the municipality during his tenure from 1911 to 1912.

Starting on April 30, 1916, the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary were the first to use daylight saving time – sommerzeit – as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year, and the United States adopted it in 1918.

Broadly speaking, daylight saving time was abandoned in the years after the war with some notable exceptions including Canada, the UK, France, and Ireland. However, it became widely adopted, particularly in North America and Europe, starting in the 1970s as a result of the 1970s energy crisis.

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The above image is of the setting sun lighting the east corner of the back-yard.