In the night from Tuesday to Sunday, the clocks went back one hour. Photo: Shutterstock
In the night from Saturday to Sunday we have an hour less because of the start of summer time. We will get that hour back in the fall. Why actually?
When does daylight saving actually come into effect?
Daylight saving time officially starts at 2 a.m. on the night from Saturday to Sunday. Daylight Savings Time lasts until October 30, 3am.
We would stop fiddling with the clock, right?
New. There was talk of that for a while. There was a majority in the European Parliament to stop the ritual.
The then Minister of the Interior Ollongren then informed the House of Representatives that the European Commission’s proposal to abolish summer time will be shelved. It is such a complicated issue that the ladies and gentlemen of the European Parliament cannot resolve it. And what is the solution? Right! Summer and winter time will not be changed for the time being.
Are there any advantages or disadvantages to winter time and summer time?
For the good listener: the ‘normal’ time is winter time. In the summer months, the clocks are moved forward one hour to make the most of the daylight.
Scientists have shown that daylight saving time can be harmful. Our biorhythm is upset by the time adjustment. Young children can be sensitive to this. Going to sleep with the sun shining through the curtains is also a bit strange, of course.
There are people who get sleeping problems from the hour that has been handed in. On the other hand, people who exercise outdoors are eagerly looking forward to daylight saving time as it allows them to complete their exercise in the daylight in the evening.
Since when do we actually do that, turn the clocks back an hour?
In the Netherlands, winter and summer time were reintroduced in 1977 due to the oil crisis. By using the sunlight for longer in the summer, energy would be saved. But that has never been proven.
Why reintroduced?
It was the Germans who really introduced daylight saving time during the First World War. To save coal, summer time came into effect at the behest of Germany. The occupied parts of Belgium and France were also confronted with daylight saving time. The Netherlands followed suit. Just like England.
Between the First and Second World War, the clock was then left undisturbed in the spring and autumn.
In the Second World War, at the command of the Germans, the Netherlands switched from the so-called Amsterdam Time to Central European Time. The clocks had to be set forward by one hour and forty minutes so that it would be as late in the Netherlands as in Germany. Daylight saving time was abolished in 1946.
Is summer time a German invention then?
You would think so. But it was probably the American scholar Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) who was the first to seriously consider how to use daylight effectively. Franklin believed that people could save a lot of candles and money if they got up a few hours earlier in the summer.
In 1907 he came up with the plan to set the clocks forward twenty minutes each spring on four consecutive Sundays. On Sundays in September, the clocks would then have to be set back twenty minutes. The plan was not taken very seriously until the Germans went to war a few years later.
And if we choose, will it be summer or winter time?
That’s just the rub. The decision makers, the politicians, cannot figure it out. So many people, so many views, also about the clock. You have ardent supporters of daylight saving time (an extra hour of light in the evening) and you have people who go with the rhythm of the sun.
Meteorologists from Weeronline suggested a year ago to change the clock for good once to move half an hour † That would have many positive effects, according to the meteorologists. The most important: the discussion about summer or winter time will then be a thing of the past.
Should the clock go forward or back?
The clocks will be officially set back one hour on Saturday night at three o’clock. Pjotr Wiese from the website Ezelsbrug.nl has collected a few mnemonics so that we will never forget that in spring the clock goes forward.
Spring, clock ahead is one. Wiese has collected more mnemonics. “When the days lengthen, the clock runs forward, when the days grow short, we run backwards.”
From the temperature it can be deduced whether the clock should go forward or back an hour: ,,Back again (worse) time backwards. Ahead again (better) time ahead.”
The most pithy comes from English: Spring ahead, fall back (Spring forward, autumn backward).
This is an adapted version of a story published in October 2020.
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