<P> The New Zealand entomologist George Hudson first proposed modern DST . Hudson's shift - work job gave him leisure time to collect insects and led him to value after - hours daylight . In 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two - hour daylight - saving shift, and after considerable interest was expressed in Christchurch, he followed up with an 1898 paper . Many publications credit DST proposal to the prominent English builder and outdoorsman William Willett, who independently conceived DST in 1905 during a pre-breakfast ride, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through a large part of a summer day . An avid golfer, Willett also disliked cutting short his round at dusk . His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later . The Liberal Party member of parliament (MP) Robert Pearce took up Willett's proposal, introducing the first Daylight Saving Bill to the House of Commons on February 12, 1908 . A select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearce's bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years . Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915 . </P> <P> William Sword Frost, mayor of Orillia, Ontario, introduced daylight saving time in the municipality during his tenure from 1911 to 1912 . </P> <P> Starting on April 30, 1916, the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria - Hungary introduced DST (German: Sommerzeit) as a way to conserve coal during wartime . Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit . Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year, and the United States adopted daylight saving in 1918 . </P> <P> Broadly speaking, most jurisdictions abandoned daylight saving time in the years after the war ended in 1918 (with some notable exceptions including Canada, the UK, France, and Ireland). However, many different places adopted it for periods of time during the following decades and it became common during World War II . It became widely adopted, particularly in North America and Europe, starting in the 1970s as a result of the 1970s energy crisis . </P>

When was daylight savings invented in the us