The hands are about to move: the clocks move forward one hour in the early hours of this Sunday, March 31, in Portugal, starting summer time. When it is 1am, the clocks move to 2am in mainland Portugal and the Autonomous Region from Madeira. In the Azores, the change is made at midnight, when the time changes to 1am.
The time will only change again on October 27th, switching to winter time.
There are many curious facts related to the change of time, a regime that is currently regulated by a community law from 2000, which stipulates that clocks must be moved forward and backward one hour annually on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October, respectively.
A year after being suggested by the European Commission, the abolition of the time change was approved by the European Parliament in 2019. But the Council of the European Union was not in favor of the change and that is why we continue to change the clocks.
An idea from Benjamin Franklin
The ritual, which takes place twice a year (at the end of March and October) originated in efforts to reduce costs at the end of the 19th century. The idea is to transfer an hour of sunlight from early morning to late afternoon, so that people can enjoy more daylight.
The American inventor Benjamin Franklin is often cited as the first person to have suggested changing the time, in the 18th century, after realizing that he was wasting his mornings in Paris by staying in bed. Therefore, he proposed that the French fire cannons at sunrise to wake people up and reduce the consumption of candles at night, highlights the newspaper The New York Times.
Over the next hundred years, the Industrial Revolution laid the groundwork for the idea of changing the time to enter government policy. For much of the 19th century, time was defined according to the Sun and the people who controlled the clocks in each city, creating dozens of conflicting, locally established hours. The American newspaper exemplifies that it could be noon in New York, 12:05 pm in Philadelphia and 12:15 pm in Boston.
The situation caused problems for railway companies trying to leave passengers and freight on time, as no one could agree on the time. Then, in the 1840s, the British railways adopted standard timetables to reduce confusion. Daylight saving time was later adopted during the First World War, with Germany being the first European nation to adopt the practice in an effort to reduce energy costs in 1916. In the following years, several Western countries also adopted the measure.
Seventy countries
One of the main arguments for adopting summer time is precisely the issue of reducing energy costs, but the studies that have been published present contradictory results. Another issue is the fact that summer time interferes with the circadian rhythm, which can lead to an increased risk of stroke and cardiovascular accidents and even more road accidents.
In October 2022, highlights the The New York Times, Mexico ended daylight saving time in most of the country (with the exception of the area along the border with the United States). Other countries that do not use daylight saving time are China, India, Russia and several US territories such as Hawaii and most of the state of Arizona.
According to the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, currently around 70 countries around the world adopt some form of summer time, mainly in Europe and North America. For countries in equatorial regions, the length of daylight varies little throughout the year, with around ten to 12 hours of daylight and ten to 12 hours of darkness per day, so saving sunlight does not offer any benefit.
In an inquiry online carried out in 2018, to which only 0.33% of Portuguese people responded, 79% said they preferred to end the time change and always maintain summer time. However, the scientists who defend the suspension of this practice are in favor of maintaining the time Winter, as it is the closest time to solar time.
In Portugal, changing the time was adopted at the beginning of the 20th century, with the first decrees on changing clocks appearing in 1916. Since then, changing the time has become a habit, but it did not happen every year – between 1992 and 1996, clocks in Portugal were in accordance with Brussels time by decision of Cavaco Silva, then Prime Minister, and there are those who remember that time when children went to school in the morning, but it was still night.
