In many parts of the world the clocks go forward in the spring and backwards in the autumn (fall). In the UK, the clocks go forward, at 1am on the last Sunday in March and back at 2am on the last Sunday in October. But what is the history of the clocks going forward?

I was always told it was because many years ago children were needed to work in the fields and by having an extra hour of daylight in the evenings this meant longer hours to be able to work outside. 

Another story was that It was mainly to give the farmers more time in the evenings for all the work they need to do during spring and summer. It is also good for children on their way to school. I remember the brief experiment between 1968 and 1971 when the clocks went forward but did not go back. The trial was deemed unsuccessful and abandoned. Not surprising seeing in the winter school children were having to walk to school in the dark. We did in those days you know, walk to school on our own. Few families had two cars and more and more mothers were working. At least on GMT (UTC) we got home before dark. 

It was also muted that it was an experiment to bring the UK in line with European time prior to joining the Common Market.  However apparently none of these explanations is true. 

What is the real reason clocks go back for forth and hour?

The idea of daylight saving time (as it is officially known) as first proposed in an article by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 but nothing came of it in America officially until 1966, although it was used during the first and second world wars to take advantage of the extra daylight hours.

In Britain it was first seriously proposed in 1907 by William Willet who thought that the early daylight mornings was a 'waste' of useful daylight and proposed that by putting the clocks forward an hour that extra hour in the evenings would be more useful. In 1915, a year after Willett's death, the Germans adopted the idea and the UK shortly followed suit.

It was defined by an Act of Paliament in 1916 stating that legal time should be one hour advanced from GMT (Greenwhich Mean Time) from Spring to Autumn. Within a few years most European countries reasonably north or south of the equator followed suit, although it has always been contraversial. In fact during the second world war Britain actually moved to double summer time by moving the clocks forward two hours and in winter putting them back just one hour in an effort to concerve power.

In 1998 British Summer Time became Daylight Saving Time as the European Community decreed it would be the same for the whole of Europe. Springing into spring at 1am on the last Sunday in March and holding back at 2am on the last Sunday in October returning to GMT in the UK (which since 1972 has been changed to Universal Time Coordiated UTC).

Why was it originally called GMT 

Greenwich UK (hence GMT) is the location of the Prime Meridian, an imaginary line similar to the Equator, which is the line of longitude dividing the eastern and western hemispheres. The Prime Meridian, as it passes through Greenwich, is considered 0 degrees longitude.