DST, Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?

Daylight Savings Time/DST
Does anyone know what time it is? Does anyone even care?

It is time to fall back and examine a few things about time.  Goodbye, Daylight Savings Time!

For those reading this and unfamiliar with the American rock band The Chicago Transit Authority (later known as Just Chicago), the opening quote is from a song written and sung by a group member in 1969. The group was formed in 1967 in Chicago. The band is no longer together, but the song lived on for me as a child in the 1970s.

Who’s idea was to change the time twice a year and why? Who knew it was founding father Ben Franklin who was the first to conceive the idea of daylight savings time? Ben wrote a comedic letter, An Economic Project (published in 1784), jokingly suggesting the change in time in 1784 while he was a delegate in Paris.  The change was not fully realized until 1916 when certain European countries began adopting daylight saving time  (DST)

We know that daylight saving time (DST) in the United States sets the clock forward by one hour during the warmer part of the year so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. DST starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, with the changes taking place at 2:00 a.m.

Years ago, daylight savings time used to end just before Halloween. It was changed in 2007. Currently, DST begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

How much do you know about Daylight Savings Time?

• The New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson first proposed the modern-day version of daylight savings time 1985.  The credit for the first to suggest the modern-day DST system is often incorrectly given to William Willet, who independently thought up and lobbied for DST in 1905.  He was riding through London one day in the early morning and noticed that a good portion of London’s population slept through several hours of the sunlight on summer days. If only he’d read Franklin’s letter, inspiration might have struck sooner.  Willet lobbied for DST until he died in 1915.
• 2:00 in the morning was the changeover time in the United States primarily because lawmakers believed the entire continental U.S. should have made the change by the start of the typical working day. Many computer and electronic
  systems can now adjust without human intervention.

  

• The Uniform Time Act 1966 standardized the starting and ending dates and when the change occurred. In addition, the act did not require that all areas observe DST.
• Not every state observes daylight savings time in the United States. Hawaii and most of Arizona don’t turn their clocks ahead or back like the rest of the country, nor do American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the United States Virgin Islands.
• In November 1883, the United States and Canada implemented standard time in their time zones. The railroads drove this; before this, each locality could determine time in whatever fashion suited them.

I must say I enjoy waking up to sunlight instead of thinking I never went to sleep because it was still dark in the morning before the time change. No wonder most Americans are confused about the time changes from DST back to standard time. So, does anybody know what time it is?