In North America, a coalition of businessmen and scientists decided on time zones, and in 1883, U.S. Scientists were also urging a standardized system for marking time, she said. “There was the threat of federal intervention in all of this, so the railroads decided they were going to police themselves,” said Carlene Stephens, a curator at the National Museum of American History. In the 1840s, British railroads adopted standard times to reduce confusion. This caused problems for railway companies trying to deliver passengers and freight on time, as nobody agreed whose time it was. For much of the 1800s, time was set according to the sun and the people running the clocks in every town and city, creating scores of conflicting, locally established “sun times.” It could be noon in New York, 12:05 in Philadelphia and 12:15 in Boston. Over the next 100 years, the Industrial Revolution laid the groundwork for his idea to enter government policy.

He proposed that the French fire cannons at sunrise to wake people up and reduce candle consumption at night. Benjamin Franklin is often credited as the first to suggest it in the 18th century, after he realized he was wasting his Parisian mornings by staying in bed. The idea is to move an hour of sunlight from the early morning to the evening, so that people can make more use of daylight. And that behavior shift also drives sales, whether at a favorite restaurant or the local convenience store.” OK, if it wasn’t farmers, whose idea was this? “When it’s lighter, they are more likely to go out and do something, whether it’s in the neighborhood, a local park or some other experience. “When it’s dark or there are limited hours after work, people tend to go straight home and stay there,” said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, an industry group. To the people who run golf courses, gas stations and many retail businesses, it’s great. To some parents, it’s a nuisance that can throw bedtime into chaos.

To farmers, daylight saving time is a disruptive schedule foisted on them by the federal government a popular myth even blamed them for its existence. American lawmakers in 1966, writing in the Uniform Time Act, decided that the right time of day for this shift was “2 o’clock antemeridian,” better known as 2 a.m.

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