Daylight saving time: Here are some popular myths behind annual event

Daylight saving time is a system made to uniformly advance clocks for extending daylight hours during conventional waking time in the summer months.

Clocks are usually set ahead one hour late in March or in April and then they are set back one hour in late September or in October in the Northern Hemisphere countries.

As per the popular myths, adjusting the clocks was to benefit farmers or improve road safety for early morning commuters. However, the practice goes back more than 100 years when the Summer Time Act was established in 1916 following a successful campaign by a builder named William Willet.

Willet wanted to shift the clocks back by 80 minutes in 20-minute weekly steps on Sundays in September and vice versa in April, reported The Guardian.

The move was made to help conserve fuel during the first world war and has endured ever since. It was taken despite the fact that there is no real benefit to lighter mornings and longer evenings.

Additionally, those who support adjusting the clocks argue daylight in the morning increases productivity, however, this is undermined by the fact that it can dive by about 20% during the summer months when, on average, there are seven more hours of daylight compared with winter.

Parallel to this, those who are against turning the clocks backwards and forwards highlight the interruption of sleeping patterns, which can cause health problems.

It is also worth noting that what October gives in an extra hour of sleep, March takes away when the clocks go forward.