Where did daylight saving time come from?

More than a billion people in 70 countries across the world are affected by the changes in time. Even Antarctica follows daylight saving.

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- Where did daylight saving time come from? Every year at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday in April, clocks move back an hour across Australia, apart from in Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia. Daylight saving is the moving of a society's clocks forwards to make better use of the change in sunlight hours over the course of the year. It's generally not observed in locations near the equator where sunrise and sunset times don't vary enough to justify it. More than a billion people in 70 countries across the world are affected by the changes in time, even Antarctica follows daylight saving.

The concept was first proposed in 1895 by new Zealand entomologist George Hudson whose work with insects led him to doing field work in after-hours daylight. Hudson saw the value in creating more daylight hours in our daily routines when the sun was out for longer. In 1908, Ontario, Canada, became the first region to start using daylight saving time. Although, the practice didn't really take off until 1916, two years into World War I. The rationale was to minimize the use of artificial lighting to save fuel for the war effort.