While Thomas Edison believed “there is time for everything”, politician Charles Buxton reckoned “you will never find time for anything - if you want time you must make it”.

Making up for lost time is an impossible dream, as time cannot be lost - although Benjamin Franklin believed “lost time is never found again”. Time cannot stop. Time cannot be saved; it cannot be bottled and returned to when it is more convenient.

It simply passes, an unstoppable and unalterable juggernaut. Yet on October 27, the last Sunday of the month, we will sit bolt upright at 1am Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and make every timemeasuring device to which we have access creak backwards by one hour. Then we’ll go back to sleep, content in the knowledge we have somehow shifted the globe back 124th of a rotation.

It’s a strange concept, daylight saving. We all know it to be impossible, yet 70 countries have adopted the practice. How on earth did this happen, and why?

Benjamin Franklin is to blame. He was visiting Paris in 1784 and made the seemingly obvious observation that Parisians, who did not rise before noon, were wasting candles by artificially lighting rooms that could be illuminated simply by drawing the blinds. He proposed waking the populace by cannon fire or church bells, forcing them to open their shutters earlier than usual in the summer months and therefore saving candle wax.

He revisited his idea of saving energy by making better use of daylight when visiting London. He wrote in his autobiography: “For in walking thro’

the Strand and Fleet Street one morning at seven o’clock, I observed there was not one shop open tho it had been daylight and the sun up above three hours - the inhabitants of London choosing voluntarily to live much by candlelight and sleep by sunshine, and yet often complaining a little absurdly of the duty on candles and the high price of tallow.”

It would not be until 1907 that the idea of saving daylight was taken up seriously, by London builder William Willett. Lampooned at the time, he fought until his death in 1915 to force people to adjust their clocks through an Act of Parliament. That Act was eventually passed one year later. Farmers were outraged - among many concerns, their chickens took three weeks to adapt to the “lost” hour (and still do).

After many decades of debate and confusion, it is now agreed by most European countries that Daylight Saving Time begins at 1am GMT on the last Sunday in March and ends at 1am GMT on the last Sunday in October.

And daylight saving saves much more than candlewax in modern times. Studies carried out by the US Department of Transportation show that Daylight Saving Time trims the entire country’s electricity usage by less than 1 per cent each day - a significant amount - by using less electricity for lighting and appliances in the morning and evening. In New Zealand, power companies have found that power usage decreases 3.5 per cent when daylight saving starts. In the first week, peak evening consumption commonly drops by around 5 per cent.

Daylight saving is even good for your wellbeing. Studies in the UK and the US show daylight decreases the risk of pedestrians being killed on the road by four times, therefore it is literally safer to be out on the streets in the evening during daylight saving. There are, however, arguments against DST.

Nowhere in the world is time more confusing than Australia during summer: when it’s noon in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, it’s 11.30am in South Australia, 11am in Queensland, 10.30am in the Northern Territory and 9am in Western Australia.

So, while most of Australia enjoys longer leisure hours and saves energy, the 9am to 5pm national business community is in a state of chaos. One wonders what Benjamin Franklin - who coined the phrase “time is money” - would think of that.

Perhaps the poet Robert Frost should have the last word: no matter how much we wind back our clocks, reset our watches, update our computers or reprogramme our video recorders, “time and tide wait for no man”. Or for anyone or for anything.

History of daylight saving (mostly US)http:webexhibits.orgdaylightsavingRoyal Observatory Greenwichwww.rog.nmm.ac.ukleafletssummersummer.htmlWorld time zoneswww.realadventures.commvtimezones.mv