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Daylight Savings Time, or DTS, ended on Nov. 1. Clocks were officially set back an hour at 2 a.m. that day. On March 8, Daylight Savings Time will begin again and we’ll set our clocks an hour forward.
BUT WHY?
To save money - that's the idea anyway.
DST began in the U.S. in 1918, according to TimeandDate, a time-tracking site. Some credit Benjamin Franklin with the idea of changing clocks to take better advantage of an extended summer evening light by starting the day later. He came up with this in the 1780s, but no country actually adopted it until Germany did in May 1916, according to LiveScience. Germany did this as a way to conserve fuel during World War I.
WHOSE FAULT IS THIS?
A lot of rumors have circulated about why we have DTS and the most steadfast is probably the one that blames farmers for the time change.
This is the opposite of the truth, however, because after WWI when President Woodrow Wilson wanted to continue DTS, farmers objected. They didn’t want to lose an hour in the morning. So, the U.S. stopped doing it in America. That is, until 1942 when WWII broke out and President Roosevelt brought DTS back year-round to conserve energy.
After that, cities and towns could participate in DTS with their own timelines. This led to scheduling nightmares across the U.S. In 1966 Congress passed the Uniform Time Act that standardized DTS. States can set DTS for themselves and the cities and towns within can decide whether to participate.
The number of DTS days was extended in 2007 through the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
DOES DTS WORK?
Maybe.
The research is contradictory. Some researchers have said that DTS cuts down on traffic accidents because fewer cars drive when it's dark, saving money on fuel and electricity (more sunlight means less need for lighting), and promote exercise with a bright morning.
Others say that savings that could be accumulated by using less electric light during DTS have been wiped out by energy-efficient bulbs. The energy the U.S. does save is about half a percentage point less than what people would have normally used. Some places have been found to use even more electricity during DTS (it gets dark very early).
In the U.S. Arizona and Hawaii do not have DTS and Florida filed legislation in 2018 to keep DTS there year-round. Meanwhile, California is attempting to repeal the time-change through a non-binding vote in 2018, but nothing came of it.
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