The idea behind modern daylight saving time is usually credited to New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson and British builder William Willett, not Benjamin Franklin.

Quick Scoop: Who “invented” daylight saving?

  • George Vernon Hudson (1895) : A New Zealand scientist who formally proposed shifting the clock by two hours in summer so he’d have more evening daylight to collect insects. His 1895 paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society is widely seen as the first concrete proposal for what became daylight saving time.
  • William Willett (early 1900s) : A British builder who became the passionate public campaigner for the idea. In 1907 he published the pamphlet “Waste of Daylight,” proposing to advance clocks in stages during spring and reverse them in fall; he lobbied Parliament to adopt it.
  • Benjamin Franklin (1784) : Often mistakenly called the “inventor” of daylight saving, he actually wrote a satirical essay suggesting Parisians get up earlier to save on candles, without changing the clocks at all. It was a joke, not a policy proposal.

In practice, daylight saving time was first implemented on a large scale by governments during World War I to save fuel and make better use of daylight, building on the ideas of Hudson and Willett rather than Franklin’s satire.

TL;DR: Modern daylight saving time traces back mainly to George Vernon Hudson’s proposal and William Willett’s campaign, while Benjamin Franklin’s role is more myth than reality.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.