Why do the clocks change - and what happened in 3-year experiment when they didn't?

This weekend marks the transition into winter as across the UK. On Sunday October 27, this will be marked with us all getting an extra hour in bed, as the time will leap back by an hour at 2am. Unfortunately, if you work nights you'll have to work the extra hour. But on the plus side, if you're on night shifts when the clocks go forward next spring - Sunday March 30 - you'll work one hour fewer.

But over a 12-month period? British Summer Time (BST) is also known as Greenwich Mean Time +1, as GMT is the official time zone of the UK (same for all the other countries at the same longitude position as us, including Iceland, Ireland and Portugal). We technically spend the majority of the year in BST, from the last Sunday of March until the final Sunday of October, but that's all because a few people wanted to take advantage of the early summer daylight, and so daylight saving time was introduced.

It doesn't change the length of each day - there are still 24 hours in a single day - but sunrise and sunset occur an hour later during the summer months, giving us a longer stretch of daylight hours in which to work, rest and play.

When did the clocks first go back?

According to the Royal Observatory, a form of daylight saving time had been first proposed in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin, but the idea wasn't taken seriously until William Willett wrote a pamphlet in 1907 called The Waste of Daylight, in which he called upon a new time system to be implemented to take advantage of the earlier summer dawns. He just so happened to also be the great-great-grandfather of Coldplay singer Chris Martin.

READ MORE:

A year after his death, in 1916 Germany became the first country in the northern hemisphere to try daylight saving time. Just a few weeks later the UK adopted the same, along with other countries that were drawn into the First World War, which started in 1914 and ended in 1918.

During the Second World War, the UK temporarily switched to British Double Summer Time - GMT+2 - during the warmer months to help with the war effort. Between 1941 and 1945, in the spring clocks would move two hours ahead of GMT to extend daylight hours into the evening, which helped save on fuel for lighting homes, shops, factories and offices during the day. During autumn, when the clocks went back, time reverted to GMT+1 to increase productivity.

It ended when WWII was over, but briefly reappeared in the summer of 1947 because of severe fuel shortages, the reports.

READ MORE:

Since 1916 the clocks have gone back every autumn except for a three-year experiment between 1968 and 1971. Then the time stayed on British Summer Time - given the grand name of British Standard Time - to see if there were any advantages to extending daylight savings the whole year round.

The experiment was brought to an end three years later with a White Paper that found no significant advantages to keeping the country on British Standard Time, and the arrangements went back to the usual GMT and GMT+1.

Why do the clocks still go back?

Not everybody likes daylight saving time, but the arguments for it are that it reduces road traffic accidents, encourages people to exercise outdoors while it's light, reduces energy usage and is better for the environment, and that people get the opportunity to enjoy longer evenings, which boosts the leisure, tourism and hospitality sectors.

READ MORE:

Some of the arguments against changing the clocks are around safety during darker mornings, the inconvenience of changing the clocks twice a year, and the fact most of us spend the majority of our time indoors working, so the amount of daylight doesn't really impact our lives.

What do you think of daylight savings? Have your say in the comments below

READ MORE:

READ MORE:

READ MORE: