Your Engineering Heritage: Daylight Saving Time in World War I and the Electrical Industry

By Nathan Brewer, IEEE History Center

Nathan Brewer
"Saving Daylight!" | U.S. Library of Congress

For the last fifty years in the United States, autumn has been a time when the clocks fall back an hour for the ending of daylight saving time. The practice has always been controversial since its adoption and remains so up to the present day. While a recent version of the Sunshine Protection Act to end the practice passed in the U.S. Senate, it was not acted upon by the U.S.  House of Representatives, and the practice will continue into the next year as of October of 2023.

An early precursor to the notion of setting clocks back to save energy dates back to Benjamin Franklin’s satirical essay “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” (1784), but the first act establishing daylight saving time in U.S. law was the Standard Time Act of 1918. In response to wartime needs, particularly that of an estimated shortage of approximately 50 million tons of bituminous coal in 1917, the Act was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on 15 March 1918. It both enacted five time zones, and established daylight saving, which specifically states:

“That at two o’clock antemeridian of the last Sunday in March of each year the standard time of each zone shall be advanced one hour, and at two o’clock antemeridian of the last Sunday in October in each year the standard time of each zone shall, by the retarding of one hour, be returned to the mean astronomical time of the degree of longitude governing said zone, so that between the last Sunday in March at two o’clock antemeridian and the last Sunday in October at two o’clock antemeridian in each year, the standard time in each zone shall be one hour in advance of the mean astronomical time of the degree of longitude governing each zone, respectively.”

Electrical utility companies were primarily concerned that any savings of coal would be offset by decreased profits, and were in almost unanimous agreement that if changes were to take place, the clocks should be set forward once and last the entire year, rather than clocks being set forward in the spring and set back in the fall. Charles L. Edgar of the Boston Edison Company stated “if the peak is to remain the same by having the ordinary time in the winter, the central station will lose in the seven months and not recoup any of the loss during the winter,” and likewise, Samuel Insull, president of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago stated in June 1918: “The annual loss in gross income to the electric companies under the present law is upwards of nine and a half million dollars and the saving in fuel, being the only saving, is about $900,000… if the change in time were made continuous all the year around, upwards of 400,000 kilowatts of capacity would be released, and somewhere around 150 to 200 millions of dollars of capital now employed would be, so to speak, released.”

Comparison of usage, from 27 April 1918 issue of Electrical World

Concerns over safety issues of increased load during certain times were also present. Data of energy consumption, output and savings were printed in trade journals like Electrical World and The Electric Journal as part of the electrical engineering community’s debate over the issue. The effects of energy usage, coal consumption and profits differed from region to region; the Iowa Gas and Electric Company reported that “coal consumption was only 5.66 per cent greater… net income has been reduced between 5 per cent and 5½ per cent by daylight saving, and that the actual coal saving in the seven months will not exceed 80 tons.” Aurora, Illinois, reported that:

“The average lighting customer’s bill was 26 cents per month less in the summer of 1918 than in the summer of 1917. This is directly attributable to the daylight-saving movement. The amount of coal burned in the summer of 1918 was nearly 700 tons greater than in the same period of 1917, in spite of the fact that 136,000 kw.-hr. more was generated in the 1917 than in the 1918 summer period. This, however, is probably due in large part to the inferior grade of fuel which the company was able to secure.”

Whereas other areas, such as the White Mountain Central Station in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, noted more drastic reductions in supply, going from 33,798 kw.-hr in 1916 to 21,948 kw.-hr. in 1918.

Effects of daylight saving laws in United States Midwest central stations, Electrical World, 11 May 1918

After the November 11th, 1918 armistice, a wartime demand for saving fuel no longer remained. While some utility companies noted a loss of revenue, an article in the 4 October 1919 issue of Electrical World noted the overall effect on the country’s economic savings to be “meager.” Reflecting on the economic issues related to daylight saving, J.D. Mortimer, president of the North American Company, wrote:

“The electric light and power utility industry has suffered the least of any of the municipal utilities during the war period. The energy output of electric utilities in practically all cases showed large increases and the growth of the business went some distance toward offsetting increased costs of service. Few electric utilities, if any, received in revenues the current costs of delivering service, but existing capacities were in many instances utilized to their utmost limit, and in violation of previous notions of safe engineering practice.”

The subsequent peacetime debate over daylight saving time was short-lived. Shortly before the armistice was signed, Senator William M. Calder of New York, the sponsor of the original Standard Time Act of 1918, proposed a resolution in October 1918 that followed recommendations from the utility companies that would have made daylight saving applicable throughout the year, so that clocks would not be set back and forward at different times in the year. This measure was also controversial for a number of reasons; the Attorney General of the State of New York cited possible interference with the opening and closing of election day polls, others like Dr. Abram Jacobi speculated the measure would have a deleterious effect on public health. After passing the U.S. Senate, the bill was withdrawn by Calder before it could pass the U.S. House of Representatives. After several attempts to repeal the Standard Time Act which were vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson, The Act for the Repeal of the Daylight-saving Law was enacted on 20 August 1919, after overruling the presidential veto. The repeal had the effect of changing daylight saving initiatives from a national level to a local level, where different states and municipalities inconsistently applied from one another. Aside from a brief period during World War II, the widespread practice of setting clocks back on a national scale was not resumed until after the passing of the Uniform Time Act of 1966 on 13 April 1966, which took effect the following year and is still in place. Debates over the effectiveness daylight saving as an energy conservation measure continue to the present day, and the following poem reprinted in the 26 October 1918 issue of Electrical World demonstrates they have always been lively.

“The Daylight Saver,” Electrical World, 26 October 1918

References and further reading

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