The Daylight Saving Act of 1917 was enacted by the

Dominion of Newfoundland Newfoundland was a British dominion in eastern North America, today the modern Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was established on 26 September 1907, and confirmed by the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westmi ...

to adopt

daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time or simply daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), and summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks (typicall ...

(DST), thus making it one of the first jurisdictions in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

to do so, only a year after the United Kingdom on May 21, 1916. DST was not instituted in the United States until March 31, 1918.

History

While living in Paris in 1784,

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...

wrote a satirical essay, in which he suggested that Parisians get up earlier in the morning. Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist

George Vernon Hudson George Vernon Hudson FRSNZ (20 April 1867 – 5 April 1946) was a British-born New Zealand entomologist credited with proposing the modern daylight saving time. He was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal in 1923. Biography Born in London, Brit ...

in 1895.

William Willett William Willett (10 August 1856 – 4 March 1915) was a British builder and a promoter of British Summer Time. Biography Willett was born in Farnham, Surrey, and educated at the Philological School. After some commercial experience, he ent ...

, a

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

building contractor, independently invented DST and pitched it to the

British Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremacy ...

in 1907. In that same year Willett spoke with

John Anderson John Anderson may refer to: Business *John Anderson (Scottish businessman) (1747–1820), Scottish merchant and founder of Fermoy, Ireland * John Byers Anderson (1817–1897), American educator, military officer and railroad executive, mentor of ...

, who was on a business trip in Britain, and explained to him the benefits of adopting DST and its economic benefits. Germany and its allies were the first European countries to adopt DST in 1916, followed quickly by the United Kingdom and many other western European countries, all in an effort to save fuel during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Upon his return to Newfoundland, Anderson became a strong proponent of daylight saving time and three times introduced a bill to the Legislative Council for its adoption. The first two attempts, in 1909 and 1910, failed. In 1917, spurred on perhaps by the recent adoptions of DST in Europe, Anderson introduced a third bill which passed on June 17, 1917. The new law stated that at nine o'clock in the evening of the second Sunday in June clocks would be put ahead to ten o'clock and would not be turned back until the last Sunday in September. It is not clear exactly when clocks were put ahead in 1917, as the bill became law one week after DST was scheduled to take effect.''

Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador ''Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador'' is an Encyclopedia commissioned by Joey Smallwood to capture the people, places, events and history of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Smallwood's view on the purpose of the encyclopedia was ...

'', . In St. John's DST was first applied on April 8, 1917, by virtue of a local ordinance. DST in Newfoundland came to be known as "Anderson’s Time", at least in the years immediately following its adoption. Daylight-saving time remained a provincial jurisdiction in Newfoundland since 1949. In 1952, the timing was changed such that it began just after midnight of the last Sunday in April and ended at midnight of the last Sunday in September. In 1970, it was extended to the midnight of the last Sunday in October.Nova Scotian Time Definition Act of 1989, Chapter 469 of the revised statutes, 1989 can be found on the Nova Scotian government website a
Time Definition Act

References

{{Reflist Politics of Newfoundland and Labrador 1917 in law Daylight saving time in Canada Dominion of Newfoundland law 1917 in Newfoundland