Expert: Ed - 5/10/2009

Question
I was wondering would you please tell me:  why do we have daylight savings?

Thanks

Answer
Cameron,
This is an interesting question, IMHO.  From what I have found online, it seems that it was originally proposed partly to enable people to enjoy more daylight in the summertime, for leisure purposes.  BUT, it was actually made into law, in many countries, around the time of World War I, mostly in order to cut back on nighttime coal-burning. This was in order to save coal resources, for the war effort.

In recent years, as oil seems to be becoming more scarce, there have been movements in some countries to adjust Daylight Savings Time even more, to save oil.

This seems like more of an economics or history question than an astronomy question, but it's still interesting, so thank you for forcing me to think about this.  Here are some websites you can look at.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Australia#Daylight_saving_time
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/daylightsaving.html

I hope this is helpful.  Keep Looking Up,
-Ed