The first person to advocate the idea seriously was a London builder named William Willett, who in 1907, wrote a pamphlet called "Waste of Time." In it he noted, "everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used."

What's in a name

First off, you should know the official name is daylight-saving time, without the plural "s," although you'll hear a lot of people call it daylight-savings time — maybe because it's easier to say or seems to flow more smoothly. But, if you want to get grammatical, the word "saving" is used as a verbal adjective or participle, modifying the word "time," similar to a "saving grace" rather than a "savings account."

Some people think the name should actually be daylight-shifting time, since that is what really happens to the clock.

Tracking time

From time immemorial, people have measured time based on the sun or the moon. The earliest of cultures noticed the waxing and waning of the moon in regular cycles. They also saw the sun moving across the sky — perhaps on the back of a turtle, maybe driven by a chariot — and began to reckon time based on its position. It was noon when the sun was highest in the sky, separating morning from afternoon. Days were longer or shorter, based on the sun's position in the sky.

The Babylonians were the first to divide the path of the sun into the 12 equal parts that we now call hours. They were also the ones who divided the circle into 360 parts called degrees, which were later divided into 60 minutes.

Primitive sundials were used to track the movement of the sun well into the Middle Ages, when mechanical clocks came along. As more sophisticated ways of measuring time developed, minutes were divided into seconds and seconds into tenths and hundredths and thousandths.

What is the value of a hundredth of a second? Ask almost any Olympic athlete.

Standardizing time

Before there could be a shift in time, there had to be something to shift it from. Credit the railroads for being the first to care — or at least, for caring the most — if time was the same in different places. Credit Britain's railroads for being the first to adopt the standard. The Great Western Railway took on what was then known as London Time in 1840, and other railway lines soon followed.

In the United States, standard time was adopted by the railroads in 1883.

Before those measures, time was mostly a local thing. Most cities and towns kept time by means of a well-known, fairly accurate clock, such as one found in a church steeple or a jeweler's window, but time could vary from town to town, anywhere from a few minutes to as much as a half-hour or more.