EUGENE DOYLE explains why we put the clocks forward by one hour in March and backwards by one hour in October

 

It happens twice a year and is usually greeted with groans such as: ‘Why don’t they just leave it alone?’ or ‘It’s not time for all that nonsense again, is it?’

And what is the cause of all this irritation – the changing of the clocks by an hour in spring and changing them back again in autumn.

Admittedly, the irritation is more pronounced in October, when the already shortening daylight hours are deprived of a further hour. It reminds us that we are really well on the way to winter, just in case we harboured any lingering doubts.

The springtime change, on the other hand, is something a breath of fresh air. The dark days of December, January and February are a memory we’d prefer to forget, and each day is stretched that little bit further. As the old people would say, by a cock’s step. And then the dusk of half-six or seven o’clock suddenly becomes the dusk of half-seven or eight.

The Summer Time Act, also known as the Daylight Saving Act, was introduced to Britain in 1916. The idea was to give farmers an extra hour each evening to help make harvesting crops more efficient. Don’t forget, the

First World War was in full flow and any measure to maximise the harvest in the shortest time was vital both logistically and for morale.
The government believed that dawn coming as early as 3 a.m. was of little use as most farmers would not be up early enough to take advantage of it. The solution was to take off one of those early sunlight hours and attach it on to the evening. How? By simply moving the clock forward one hour.

It first made its appearance on 21 May 1916 and it ran until 1 October.

This new scheme was not introduced to Ireland at that time because such things are seldom straight-forward. Normally, British clocks are set to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The changing of the hour at Easter is called British Standard Time (BST). But in 1916, and for many years prior to that, Dublin and the rest of Ireland were on DMT – Dublin Standard Time.

The reason for this was, Dublin was (and, of course, still is) about twenty minutes behind Greenwich as determined by when the sun is directly over each location. Likewise, the sun won’t be over our west coast for a further twenty minutes. So Ireland was on DMT.