DAYLIGHT SAVING

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 5, 7 January 1928, Page 7

DAYLIGHT SAVING

TAKING OF FIRST STEP (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 4th October. It is interesting to learn, in view of the passing of the Daylight Saving Bill in New Zealand, that Benjamin Franklin, a century and a half ago, was the pioneer of the principle. He published an essay entitled "An Economic Project," in which the idea was fully discussed and described^ A correspondent in "The Times" mentions that Franklin's arguments read strangely familisr to us now. The expense of lighting apartments, the desire for economy, the waste of sunshine in the early hours of the day—all these were referred to. Franklin then proceeded to calculate the probable saving of expense in Paris if the hours of rising and retiring were made to agree more closely with the rising and setting of the sun. After assuming that 100,000 families existed in that city, that they each consumed half a pound of candles an hour, that this continued for seven hours in each of 183 summer nights, and that the price of candles was 30 sous a pound, he stated that the inhabitants might save the immense sum of 96,075,----000 livres-tournois by using sunlight instead of candlelight. To enforce economy in wax and tallow he suggested a tax on shutters which kept out the sunlight, and restrictions on facilities for the purchase of caudles and on the movement of coaches after sunset. Franklin was pre-eminently practical in all things, arid he realised the difficulties of -putting; the idea into operation. "Cc nest que le premier pas gui coute," he quoted, and many who have enjoyed the extra hour of sunlight are glad that step was taken.