<P> Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose 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 in 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, he 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 proposal was taken up by the Liberal member of parliament (MP) Robert Pearce, who introduced 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 were the first to use 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 it in 1918 . </P> <P> Broadly speaking, daylight saving time was abandoned in the years after the war (with some notable exceptions including Canada, the UK, France, and Ireland). However, it was brought back for periods of time in many different places during the following decades and commonly 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 time created in the usa