During his time as an American envoy to France,
Benjamin Franklin, author of the proverb, "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise", anonymously published a letter suggesting that
Parisians economize on
candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight.
[16] This 1784
satire proposed taxing
shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise.
[17] Franklin did not propose DST; like ancient Rome, 18th-century Europe did not keep precise schedules. However, this soon changed as
rail and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklin's day.
[18]