The Royal Society of New Zealand responded with refusal and mockery because it was seen as unnecessary and complicated. Although it is argued that Benjamin Franklin is the first one to bring up the idea of daylight saving time in his letter to the authors of “The Journal of Paris”, the idea was first officially proposed by Hudson. Years later, William Willett, a British builder, proposed the idea to the British government but was also faced with rejection. Two years later, the United States passed the Standard Time Act which was later to be discontinued, but some states continued to practice Daylight Saving Time by turning clocks forward in the spring and backward in the fall. In 1966, the U.S. passed the Uniform Time Act of standardized time zones that “uniforms” daylight saving practices across the country.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 21, 2021 17:03 UTC