As I among many others sit here working on their fourth cup of caffeine in as many hours since waking up, I can't help but wonder, "Who was the jerk who invented this horrible thing, and what were his cruel motivations for doing so?"
In ancient times and in agrarian communities people naturally adjusted their schedules to the available light from the sun, but civilization requires a more rigorously scheduled day. In order for groups of people to meet at the same time people they had to all use the same time system, which led to the rigidity of the sleep schedule.
Benjamin Franklin had the idea back in 1784 to adjust sleep schedules to the seasons as was done among agrarians and wrote a somewhat factious essay about the idea in a Paris newspaper. He was constantly thinking and writing about efficiency and believed in the value of waking up early ("Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise" was a favorite proverb of his), and the daylight savings time would have people waking up earlier relative to the solar day.
The idea wasn't implemented during Franklin's time, and 100 years went by before it was reintroduced by George Hudson, a British-New Zealander entomologist and astronomer who published a paper in 1895 advocating a two hour daylight savings time. Another Briton, William Willett, published a pamphlet in 1907 advocating an 80-minute daylight savings and worked to get it passed in British parliament. Both men supported the change because it meant that more evening work and activities could occur during daylight, which would reduce the need for artificial light during the extra daylight time every day. Willett, in particular, wanted more time in the evening to play golf.
World War I led to shortages of coal and oil, and the daylight savings time theoretically meant using one less hour of fuel every day. Germany adopted daylight savings in 1916, and was followed by much of the rest of Europe and eventually the United States. After the war, many countries reverted to normal time and readopted it during wars and energy shortages. Britain left their daylight savings as law after WWI, but the US repealed theirs (over a veto from President Wilson, another golfer) until reintroducing it in 1942 during WWII. It has a rather messy history after that, with DST being passed and repealed at different times by different states and the federal government.