This Saturday night, Oct. 31, remember to set clocks back one hour. If you use smart phones, no need to worry, they will reset themselves. It is time once again to ‘Fall back,’ or leave daylight savings time.
The idea of the time change was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin to save on the cost of lighting. His suggestion was published in a French magazine in April 1784.
The idea never really caught on, though, until various nations were looking for ways to economize. In 1907 an Englishman brought a proposal to the House of Commons, which promptly rejected the notion. British Summer Time was brought back to Parliament in 1916.
The United States followed suit near the end of WWI in an attempt to save energy. The law ‘to save daylight’ went into effect March 15, 1918. It was met with unabashed resistance.
When Congress made it official in the Uniform Time Act of 1966, the statement only reads if the public decides to observe savings time, it must do so uniformly. Arizona – except Navaho reservations – and Hawaii do not observe daylight savings time. Also thumbing their noses at the notion are American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The original act called for clocks to change the last Sunday of April and the last Sunday of October, but that was changed under the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The changes now occur on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday in November.