William Willett

William Willett (1857 - March 4, 1915) was the inventor of Daylight saving time. He was a builder born in Chelsea, London but who lived for most of his life in Petts Wood, London.

In 1907 he proposed in a pamphlet The Waste of Daylight [1], that the clocks should be advanced by 80 minutes in the summer. The evenings would then remain light for longer, increasing daylight recreation time and also saving 2.5 million pounds in lighting costs. He suggested that the clocks should be advanced by 20 minutes at a time at 2 am on successive Sundays in April and be retarded by the same amount on Sundays in September.

This was not the first time that the idea of adapting to daylight hours had been mooted - Benjamin Franklin had done so in 1784 in a light-hearted letter published in the Journal of Paris [1]. Franklin's suggestion was that people should get up earlier in summer.

Through vigorous campaigning by 1908 Willet had managed to gain the support of an MP Robert Pearce who made several unsuccessful attempts to get it passed into law. The idea was examined again by a parliamentary select committee in 1909 but again nothing was done. The outbreak of the First World War made the issue more important primarily because of the need to save coal. Germany had already introduced its own scheme when the bill was passed on May 17, 1916 and the clocks were advanced by an hour on the following Sunday, May 21.