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100 Years, 100 Legacies >

World War 1 Centenary

World War I changed everything. From new countries to literature, from tanks to treaties and from flamethrowers to fashion, the conflict is still writ large on our lives 100 years on.

It gave birth to violent dictators and their ideologies but extended the electoral franchise to millions. It ushered in the era of mechanised warfare whilst laying the foundations for modern medicine. Empires crumbled, borders were redrawn, art movements flowered and women won the vote (even if you still had to be over 30 in some countries). Poets committed some of the most memorable imagery in modern verse to paper while a generation of writers would descend on Europe’s war-torn cities and fashion a new style of literature.

After millions of men gave their lives on the battlefields of Europe, it was doubly tragic that a deadly influenza would claim up to 50 million more deaths in the conflict’s immediate aftermath. World War I has given us daylight saving time, Dada, triage, chemical weapons, plastic surgery, fascism and, of course, another war. It invented new forms of killing and unearthed miraculous ways to save lives.

Wall Street Journal editors from around the world have selected 100 legacies that still shape our lives today. History is always open to interpretation, but as the war to end all wars retreats from living history, it feels more important than ever to remember its impact. It is everywhere you look.

Writers

Nathan Hodge, Art Patnaude, Tommy Stubbington, Andrew Peaple, Tom Mudd, Peter Evans, Sarah Sloat, Rory Jones, Alexis Flynn, Fiona Matthias, Harriet Torry, Alen Mattich, Chase Gummer, Laurence Eyton, Peter Stiff, Paul Hannon, Laurence Witherington, Gautam Naik, Christopher Lawton, Michael Wright, Neetha Mahadevan, Laurence Norman, Caitlan Reeg, Jovi Juan, Liza Hearon, Inti Landauro, Thomas Varela, Marcus Walker, Jake Lee, Shirley Wang, Stephen Fidler, Juhana Rossi, Will Lyons, Monica Houston-Waesch, Francesca Freeman, Peter Nurse, James Leigh, Max Colchester, Todd Buell, Frances Robinson, Adam Najberg, Matthew Walls, Yuka Hayashi, Jose DeCordoba, Selina Williams, Naftali Bendavid, David Winning, Geoffrey T. Smith, Charles Hutzler, Matina Stevis, Ayla Albayrak, Charles Forelle

Editors

Tom Mudd, Laurence Eyton, Sheila Courter, Margaret de Streel, Matthew Walls, Adrian Kerr, Peter Stiff, Perry Cleveland-Peck, Sofia McFarland, Tina Fuhr, Lydia Serota, Ese Erheriene, Jon Sindreu, Yvonne Dennis, John Crowley

Multimedia Producers

Dipti Kapadia, Mark Kelly, Parminder Bahra, Miho Inada, Menglin Huang, Ayla Albayrak, Monika Vosough, Billy Higgins, Beckey Bright, Tom DiFonzo, George Downs, Pat Minczeski, Michael Ovaska

Designers & Developers

Jovi Juan, Renee Lightner, Elliot Bentley

Consultant

David Tattersfield from the Western Front Association

Daylight-Saving Time

by Stephen Fidler

First World War Centenary – Daylight-Saving Time

Daylight-saving time was introduced as a temporary measure during World War I, as a way of conserving energy and providing more usable hours of daylight.

Germany was the first to start using it, in 1916. The U.K. followed a few weeks later, and France and the U.S. followed suit.

A movement to introduce daylight-saving time had been under way in England before the war started—urged by William Willett from 1907 in his pamphlet “The Waste of Daylight.”

But the idea is often attributed originally to an essay written by Benjamin Franklin, who was apparently surprised to find light when he woke up unusually early one morning in Paris. If everyone got up and went to bed earlier, he argued, many candles would be saved.

The daylight-saving measure was repealed in many countries after the war ended—but readopted during World War II. However, in the U.K. it continued annually and was then made permanent in 1925, when it lost its designation of daylight-saving time and became British Summer Time.

“Summer time was kept on, despite protests from farmers on behalf of their cows,” wrote British historian A.J.P. Taylor. He quoted Francis Hirst, the radical individualist, as saying: “Of useful inventions…[this was] perhaps the best that we can connect with the war period.”

The U.K. switched to Double British Summer Time during World War II, with clocks two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in the summer and one hour ahead in the winter. In 1968, the U.K. experimented for three years during which clocks stayed one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time for the entire year. In 1971, it reverted to the summer-time switch.

In the U.S., daylight-saving time was introduced year-round in 1942 for World War II. From 1945 to 1966, states and localities were free to choose when and if to introduce DST, which became a source of significant confusion.

The U.S.’s Uniform Time Act of 1966 stated that DST should begin on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday of October. Year-round DST was introduced in the winter of 1973-74 during the global energy crisis. Standard time was reintroduced for winters in late 1974.

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