Well, it seems it might have been Ben Franklin’s alter ego Poor Richard, rather than the old kite-flyer himself, who came up with the idea for saving daylight. But Wikipedia, the wicked online encyclopedia, discounts Franklin altogether and credits a William Willett.

It is sometimes asserted that DST was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin in a letter to the editors of the Journal of Paris [1]. However, the article was humorous; Franklin was not proposing DST, but rather that people should get up and go to bed earlier.

It was first seriously proposed by William Willett in the “Waste of Daylight” [2], published in 1907, but he was unable to get the British government to adopt it, despite considerable lobbying.

So “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” is comedy?