WASHINGTON — Love it or hate it, there is one thing that can be said about daylight saving time: It's happening this weekend. Here's a look at the origins and history of DST as we spring forward on Sunday.
A 47-hour weekend?
The broad idea of daylight saving time (DST) is credited to Benjamin Franklin back in 1784. When he was a delegate to France, he wrote of his idea in a comedic essay titled "An Economical Project," encouraging the French to abandon their usual custom of waking up at noon and instead rise with the sun.
A London builder, William Willett, tried to popularize the idea in a 1907 pamphlet titled "A Waste of Daylight." In it, Willett encourages people to get out of bed earlier in the summer so they can be more productive.
In America, we adopted DST in 1918 and then repealed it in 1919. A few states and cities continued to use DST on a voluntary basis.
From 1942 to 1945 President Roosevelt instituted year-round DST known as "War Time." After World War II, since there was no federal law in effect, DST again was left to the whims of each state and localities. You can imagine the confusion.
DST and energy saving
President Nixon signed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973. Now we change the clocks on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November as mandated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
Bar riots and a tale about the draft
When we spring forward, patrons in a bar lose an hour of drinking. Yes, this has led to riots in some cities. There is another story - I’m not sure it’s true - but it is very interesting.
During the Vietnam War - for all you youngsters, we had a draft back then - a man from Delaware, who was born just after midnight DST, would have been drafted but he argued his birthday was an hour earlier because standard time was the state’s official time to record births.
By declaring his birthday one hour earlier he was assigned a higher draft number on the previous day and missed the draft.
The time is now
Hopefully, before you went to bed Saturday night you remembered to turn your clocks ahead one hour - spring forward.
Also, please remember to replace the batteries in your smoke detectors this weekend.