Last night was one of the two nights each year that many of us dull men stay up late. In London we stayed up to watch clocks change.
A week from now, Sunday November 1, this will be taking place in the USA and Canada.
At Cockooland in Cheshire, it was a super busy time. Here’s Roman Piekarski, the museum’s founder and curator, at work — 700 clocks to change — ‘drives him cuckoo’ according to headlines in several newspapers:
Here’s what was happening:
There’s an informative article about the background of daylight saving time in The Telegraph this weekend: “When do the clocks go back? A countdown to GMT and Daylight Saving Time ending – October 2015tober 2015
The article points out that there are over 1,000 clocks in the residences of the Queen that take 50 hours of staff time to adjust.
Who started it? William Willet (1856-1915), a British builder, who wanted to prevent the waste of valuable daylight hours of summer mornings. He published a pamphlet “‘The Waste of Daylight’ in 1907. He spent the rest or his life promoting it.
William Willet
A memorial sundial, permanently set at daylight saving time, was erected in Petts Wood near his home in Bromley, Surry:
Topic of lively discussions among dull men — what should it be called: ‘daylight saving’ or daylight savings”?
