New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to implement daylight savings time.

George Hudson, an entomologist and astronomer, was the first known advocate of daylight saving time in New Zealand.

Hudson advocated for seasonal time adjustment in a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1895.

Members of society, however, mocked his idea.

Parliament did not pass the Summer Time Act, allowing for daylight savings in the summer, until 1927. 

Daylight saving time officially ends tomorrow (April 2nd) at 3 a.m., when clocks are set back one hour. 

Fire and Emergency community readiness manager Steve Turek said that checking smoke alarms is easy and should actually be done once a month, but the beginning and end of daylight saving time were a good calendar reminder.

Batteries should be checked, and alarms’ test functions should be run to see that they were working.

The Fire and Emergency Department recommends having an alarm in every bedroom, living area and hallway, and for families to have an escape plan and meeting point. All rental houses must also now have smoke alarms.

Not all smoke alarms or batteries are the same, and the Fire Service explains more about its recommendations on its website.

Don't forget to manually set your clocks back one hour before going to bed tonight. 

The history of daylight saving in NZ

The current times have been fixed since 2007.

1868 — New Zealand officially set a national standard time — called New Zealand Mean Time — at 11 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

1927 — New Zealand first observed daylight saving time. The dates and time differences were changed several times over the following years.

1941 — New Zealand summertime was extended by emergency regulations to cover the whole year.

1946 — New Zealand summertime (12 hours in advance of GMT) was adopted as New Zealand standard time. Daylight saving time was effectively discontinued at this point.

1974–5 — Daylight saving was trialled again in 1974, and introduced in 1975. Daylight saving time is 1 hour ahead of New Zealand standard time.

1985 — Public attitudes were surveyed and over the next few years the period of daylight saving time was extended twice.

2006-07 — Following public debate and a petition presented to Parliament the period of daylight saving was extended to its current dates. New Zealand observes daylight saving from the last Sunday in September to the first Sunday in April.

2008 — Daylight saving public attitude survey.