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OVERVIEW OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
Daylight saving time (also called DST, or summer time) is the portion of the year in which a region's local time is advanced by (usually) one hour from its official standard time. It is most common in temperate regions.
"Daylight saving time" is a system intended to "save" daylight, as opposed to "wasting" time (for example, by sleeping long past sunup). The official time is adjusted forward during the spring and summer months, so that the active hours of work and school will better match the hours of daylight.
The list of time zones has information on which areas do or do not observe DST.
The expression daylight savings time (with the extra "s") is a common alternate form but is sometimes considered to be improper English because "saving" is used here as a verbal adjective describing a single type of activity. Because "daylight saving" is a compound adjective, the proper form would actually be daylight-saving time, with the hyphen.
HISTORY OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
It is sometimes asserted that DST was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin in a letter to the editors of the Journal of Paris [1]. However, the article was humorous; Franklin was not proposing DST, but rather that people should get up and go to bed earlier.
It was first seriously proposed by William Willett in the "Waste of Daylight" [2], published in 1907, but he was unable to get the British government to adopt it, despite considerable lobbying.
The idea of daylight saving time was first put into practice by the German government during the First World War between April 30 and October 1, 1916. Shortly afterward, the United Kingdom followed suit, first adopting DST between May 21 and October 1, 1916. Then on March 19, 1918, the U.S. Congress established several time zones (which were already in use by railroads and most cities since 1883) and made daylight saving time official (which went into effect on March 31) for the remainder of World War I. It was observed for seven months in 1918 and 1919. The law, however, proved so unpopular (mostly because people rose and went to bed earlier than in modern times) that the law was later repealed.
Daylight saving time was reinstated in the United States on February 9, 1942, again as a wartime measure to conserve resources. This remained in effect until World War II began winding down and the requirement was removed on September 30, 1945.
From 1945 to 1966, U.S. federal law did not address daylight saving time. States and localities were free to observe daylight saving time or not. This resulted in a patchwork where some areas observed DST while adjacent areas did not, and it was not unheard of to have to reset one's clock several times during a relatively short trip (e.g., bus drivers operating between Moundsville, West Virginia, and Steubenville, Ohio had to reset their watches seven times over 35 miles).
The U.S. federal Uniform Time Act of 1966 mandated that daylight saving time begin nationwide on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday of October. Any state that wanted to be exempt from daylight saving time could do so by passing a state law, provided that it exempt the entire state. The law was amended in 1972 to permit states that straddle a time zone boundary to exempt the entire area of the state lying in one time zone. The law was amended again in 1986 to begin daylight saving time on the first Sunday in April, to take effect the following year.
In response to the 1973 energy crisis, daylight saving in the United States was begun earlier in both 1974 and 1975, commencing on the first Sunday in January in the former year and the last Sunday in February in the latter.
Starting March 11, 2007, daylight saving time will be extended another four to five weeks, from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November. The change was introduced by the Energy Policy Act of 2005; the House had originally approved a motion that would have extended DST even further. Proponents claimed that the extension would save "the equivalent of" 10,000 barrels of oil per day, but this figure was based on U.S. Department of Energy information from the 1970s, the accuracy and relevance of which the DoE no longer stands by. There is very little recent research on what the actual positive effects, if any, might be. [3]
The extension, which puts the U.S. out of step with other countries in North America (for example Canada), was greeted by criticism from the airline industry [4], observant Jews [5], and those concerned for the safety of children traveling to school in the dark before the late sunrise [6]. Many businesses will have to reprogram or replace devices such as time clocks, security systems, and timed safes; traffic lights must be adjusted to properly recognize rush hour. Devices that use atomic time from radio clocks will adjust automatically, but such devices are rare, and it is difficult to receive the signals inside buildings. Many devices, such as VCRs, cannot be updated at all and will need to be manually adjusted twice a year.
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TRIVIA
Fire safety officials in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States encourage citizens to use the two annual time changes as a reminder to check the batteries in home and office fire alarms and smoke detectors.
Source: The English Wikipedia
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