Editor's note: This article is a part of a series reviewing U.S. and Utah history for KSL.com's Historic section.SALT LAKE CITY — Clocks around the country and parts of the world will jump forward one hour beginning at 2 a.m. Sunday for daylight saving time. But have you ever wondered how it came about?

Long mistaken to be a tool to help farmers, daylight saving time was created as a way to conserve energy in the summer months and was widely first adopted by countries during World War I, according to History.com. U.S. Congress enacted its first daylight saving time measure exactly 100 years ago this month.

However, the origin of the idea dates back before that.

The modern idea is credited to New Zealand scientist George Vernon Hudson, who, according to a Huffington Post article, was upset over the early dusk in summer and theorized a plan to move clocks ahead two hours in summer and return to normal in winter. Hudson first presented his paper on the theory in October 1895, according to his obituary in the National Library of New Zealand.

Some credit American forefather Benjamin Franklin for daylight saving time but, as History.com argues, the evidence for that comes from a 1784 “satirical essay” promoting an idea of pushing time around based on daylight and cutting candle-burning costs. There’s also evidence ancient Romans practiced a form of daylight saving, according to an article by University of Pittsburgh’s B.L. Uixman.

More than a decade after Hudson, the idea was pushed further by British builder William Willett, who published “Waste of Daylight” in 1907. Willett proposed moving clocks forward by 20 minutes each Sunday in April and moving clocks backward 20 minutes every Sunday in September.

“Everyone appreciates the long light evenings,” Willett wrote in his pamphlet. “Everyone laments their shrinkage as the days grow shorter, and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the clear bright light of early mornings, during spring and summer months, is so seldom seen or used.”

The idea wasn’t immediately adopted in Great Britain but was starting to gain traction. In 1908, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, was the first modern community to use the concept, according to timeanddate.com.

However, it wasn’t until war broke out in Europe that the concept was widely put into use. Germany began using daylight saving time in April 1916 to conserve electricity and power, and Great Britain — a year after Willett died — began using it shortly after Germany, according to History.com. Many of the other European countries also began using it that same year.

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It was first enacted in the U.S. when Congress passed a bill on March 19, 1918. The bill formalized standard time and also called for daylight saving time to begin the last Sunday of March and to conclude on the last Sunday of October, to conserve energy. It was observed for two years before it was dropped, according to Web Exhibits. The U.S. also observed “wartime” from 1942 to 1945, in which the country remained on daylight saving time year-round during World War II. Afterward, states could choose if they would observe daylight saving time.

In 1966, the Uniform Time Act standardized the use of daylight saving time on a national scale, and most states have observed it uniformly since.

However, in recent years there have been arguments about if it still has a practical purpose, which remains up to debate.

Bills to eradicate daylight saving time in Utah pop up every so often. For example, Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, proposed a resolution in this year’s legislative session that would have moved Utah into the Central Time zone and removed Utah from observing daylight saving time. This would have essentially meant that Utah would remain on Mountain Daylight Time year-round. The resolution didn’t pass during the session.

So in the meantime, don’t forget to move your clock forward an hour before you go to bed Saturday night.

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