Rewinding the clock on the history of daylight saving in Wisconsin

Every year, we set our clocks forward an hour in the spring, then fall back one hour in the autumn. And it feels like the following weeks, our internal clocks are all messed up.

But it wasn’t always this way or doesn’t have to be. In early March 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act. This bill would make daylight saving time the new, permanent standard time — so we would no longer need to spring forward or fall back. It needs to pass the U.S. House of Representatives and get signed by President Joe Biden before it would become law.

When daylight saving time was first enacted nationally after World War I, Wisconsinites had mixed emotions. To learn more about this history, Amanda Seligman, a professor of history and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, shares more.

"In order to understand daylight saving, first, you have to understand why we have standard time. For most of human history, people just relied on the sun to tell time," she says.

In the United States, standard time was birthed with the creation of railways and trains, Seligman explains.

As trains moved across the continent in the 19th century, railway companies began to have problems with delivery and coordinating schedules. Soon, the same companies created their own time system split into four distinct time zones. Later in history, U.S would quickly adopt this system.

Then, during World War II, Germany passed daylight saving as a way to save fuel and garner morale for their country.

"In 1918, the United States government also made daylight saving a national mandate. Again, it was part of that wartime propaganda — save fuel, help win the war. So daylight saving is first tried in the United States in 1918, but it doesn't last. It's controversial and it's not permanent," says Seligman.

The law on daylight saving was particularly opposed by farmers. Farmers argued that because it was difficult to adapt animals to the new time, especially for Wisconsin dairy famers whose cattle were accustomed to getting milked at a certain time.

Congress passed a billed influenced by farmers that prohibited using daylight saving. The president vetoed that prohibition, and then Congress overrode the veto.

But in urban cities, like Milwaukee, most workers liked the change. "By and large there was, in Milwaukee, more support for daylight savings than there was opposition. It was one of these really complicated political stories. Most folks liked it," says Seligman.

Now, with the Sunshine Protection Act making its way through Congress, she says it's important to note that humans across the world have had all kinds of different ways to measure time.

Seligman points out just because there are benefits to timekeeping, that doesn't mean we need to organize our whole lives around time. "I guess what I would say is that standard time and daylight saving neither of them is more natural than say the QWERTY keyboard. It's just what we're used to using, but it doesn't have to be that way."