-> But, prompted by David's memory, I'm now fairly certain that  
-> Britain went to Double Daylight Saving during summer (GMT + 2hrs)  
-> - and to ordinary daylight saving (GMT + 1hr) throughout winter -  
-> for the whole of WW2. 
  
I'm not sure about this, but it seems more likely to me that GMT was 
used in dead of winter. The north of the country gets only five or six 
hours of daylight per day at that time, and it makes sense to make the 
best use of it by centring it about noon, which happens if GMT is used. 
  
-> I also remember reading somewhere that the USA went to continuous  
-> daylight saving from 1942 to 1945 ... probably needs verifying. 
  
I'm sceptical. Civilian life in the States was affected very little 
during WW2. They weren't short of fuel. Nobody was dropping bombs on 
them, and so on. 
  
-> And incidentally,  am I wrong is thinking that the whole idea was  
-> first dreamnt up by Benjamin Franklin ? 
  
Before you can mess with them, you have to have standard time zones, as 
opposed to setting clocks to local solar time. Time zones were 
introduced in the 19th Century when railways started carrying people 
quickly over long distances. I think even this step was post-Franklin, 
so the idea of shifting clocks to save daylight is probably even more 
recent. 
  
                               dow 
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