Daylight Saving Time has begun to feel like a grind. Fall back. Spring forward. Don’t forget to change the clocks!
Well, first, as a reminder, it’s important to know that this phenomenon is called daylight “saving” time and not daylight “savings” time.
Some people like to credit Benjamin Franklin as the inventor of daylight-saving time when he wrote in a 1784 essay about saving candles and saying, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” But that was meant more as satire than a serious consideration. Now that I know it was a satirical statement, I think I like ol’ Ben even better.
In the name of fuel conservation, Germany was the first to adopt daylight saving time on May 1, 1916, during World War I. The rest of Europe followed soon after, however, the United States didn’t adopt daylight saving time until March 19, 1918. It was unpopular and abolished after World War I.
On Feb. 9, 1942, Franklin Roosevelt instituted a yearround daylight-saving time, which he called “war time.” This lasted until Sept. 30, 1945. Daylight saving time didn’t become standard in the US until the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which mandated standard time across the country within established time zones. It stated that clocks would advance one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April and turn back one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October.
States could still exempt themselves from daylight saving time, provided the entire state did so. In the 1970s, due to the 1973 oil embargo, Congress enacted a trial period of year-round daylight-saving time from January 1974 to April 1975 in order to conserve energy.
Daylight saving time has continued to evolve. It now starts at 2 a.m., the second Sunday of March, and ends at 2 a.m. the first Sunday of November. The change was advocated in part to allow children to go trick or treating in more daylight.
Only two states don’t observe daylight saving time, Arizona and Hawaii.
The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the Sunshine Protection Act, introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), in March 2022, but it didn’t become law.
The legislation would have made daylight-saving time the new, permanent standard time throughout the country starting on Nov. 5, 2023. That means we wouldn’t change our clocks, or “fall back,” in November and would have a full year of daylight-saving time instead of only eight months.
A matching bill was introduced in the U.S. House, but it didn’t pass or make it to a vote before the 117th Congress officially ended on Jan. 3, 2023. That means the legislation needs to be reintroduced during the current Congress in 2023.
For now, we will still spring forth one hour in the spring and fall back one hour in November.
