Fall backwards: You can thank a New Zealander for your extra hour of sleep this weekend

Don't forget to move your clocks back by an hour on Saturday night, as 3am on Sunday marks the end of daylight saving time. Photo / Ilona Hanne

“Spring forwards, fall backwards.”

Or in other words - as we move forward into the cooler autumn months, time will go backwards (by an hour) this weekend, when daylight saving time ends at 3am on Sunday, April 7.

That means before bed this Saturday night, people across the country will be resetting the time on their clocks and watches (and probably leaving the one in the car because it’s just too complicated and anyway, it will be correct again in a few months) and looking forward to an hour’s lie-in on Sunday morning.

As you lie in bed, savouring that extra hour before you actually have to get up and do something or be somewhere, spare a thought for George Hudson - the Kiwi responsible for your extra hour of sleep.

George wasn’t just some lazy layabout who wanted more sleep in winter however. Back in 1895, George was a post office employee by day and a keen amateur entomologist (insect enthusiast) outside of his work hours. It was in the final hours of daylight, after he finished work for the day, when George was able to spend time seeking out and collecting a wide range of bugs. The problem for George and his peers however, was those hours weren’t long and plentiful.

In 1895, he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society suggesting a two-hour daylight-saving shift in time to create lighter evenings for hobbyists such as himself to utilise. While his idea got some support, it wasn’t enough to initiate any official appetite for change, and George had to wait over three decades for New Zealand to introduce daylight saving time (and he only got one hour, not the two he had originally proposed).

In his birthplace of England, however, George’s idea was gaining some traction. There, builder (and great-grandfather of Chris Martin of Coldplay fame) William Willett published a pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight in 1907, in which he proposed clocks should be advanced by 20 minutes each week in April, making a total of 80 minutes of time change, and then reversed in the same way in September. He argued this would create lighter evenings, saving a few million pounds in lighting costs, and would prevent people “wasting daylight”. His idea gained support from many, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill, but was still rejected by the British government of the time.

The outbreak of the World War I brought his idea back in favour, however, with the need to save coal. Willett’s much-publicised campaigning got the attention of Germany and Austria, and driven by a need to save coal and candles, as well as extending the working day to help the war effort, the two countries introduced daylight saving time in 1916. A few weeks later Britain followed suit, and on Sunday, May 21, 1916 enacted a change of one hour to clock times as a wartime production-boosting device under the Defence of the Realm Act. Other countries involved in the war followed suit, including the USA, where it became known as “war time”, reflecting the reason behind the change.

But for George and his bugs in New Zealand, it was a longer wait. It was in 1927, 32 years after he had first suggested the idea, that daylight saving time was finally introduced in New Zealand.

So this weekend, as daylight saving time ends (until September 29 this year), spare a thought for George and his bugs, and remember to turn your clocks back, check your smoke alarm batteries and enjoy that extra hour of sleep.