day light saving time started in spring or fall when first begun ?

Answer 1

In the Spring, just Google it there's alot more on the subject.

Idea of Daylight Saving Time

The idea of daylight saving was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin (portrait at right) during his sojourn as an American delegate in Paris in 1784, in an essay, "An Economical Project." Read more about Franklin's essay.

Some of Franklin's friends, inventors of a new kind of oil lamp, were so taken by the scheme that they continued corresponding with Franklin even after he returned to America.

The idea was first advocated seriously by London builder William Willett (1857-1915) in the pamphlet, "Waste of Daylight" (1907), that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September. As he was taking an early morning a ride through Petts Wood, near Croydon, Willett was struck by the fact that the blinds of nearby houses were closed, even though the sun was fully risen. When questioned as to why he didn't simply get up an hour earlier, Willett replied with typical British humor, "What?" In his pamphlet "The Waste of Daylight" he wrote:

"Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used."




The History of Time Zones

Standard time the time of a town, region or country that is established by law or general usage as civil time. It is determined locally. The whole of China, one of the largest countries in the world, has decided to adopt a single time zone

The concept of standard time was adopted in the late 19th century in an attempt to end the confusion that was caused by each community's use of its own solar time. Some such standard became increasingly necessary with the development of rapid railway systems and the consequent confusion of schedules that used scores of different local times kept in separate communities. (Local time varies continuously with change in longitude.)

The need for a standard time was felt most particularly in the United States and Canada, where several extensive railway routes passed through places that differed by several hours in local time.

Sir Sandford Fleming, a Canadian railway planner and engineer, outlined a plan for worldwide standard time in the late 1870s. Following this initiative, in 1884 delegates from 27 nations met in Washington, D.C., for the Meridian Conference and agreed on a system basically the same as that now in use.

The present system employs 24 standard meridians of longitude (lines running from the North Pole to the South, at right angles to the Equator) 15º apart, starting with the prime meridian through Greenwich, England. These meridians are theoretically the centres of 24 standard time zones; in practice, the zones have in many cases been subdivided or altered in shape for the convenience of inhabitants.

Time is the same throughout each zone and differs from the international basis of legal and scientific time, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), by an integral number of hours; minutes and seconds are the same.

In a few regions, however, the legal time kept is not that of one of the 24 standard time zones because half-hour or quarter-hour differences are in effect there.

Websites
Sir Sandford Fleming: website
Sir Sandford Fleming: website

Answer 2

I don't know for absolutely sure, but it would make sense that it started in the Spring, because the Summer hours are called "Daylight Savings Time" and the Winter hours are called "Standard Time".