Every spring, Daylight Saving time always seems to sneak up on us. I feel like it’s two weeks in a row of saying “I can’t believe it’s already almost time to spring forward, I’m not looking forward to losing an hour” and then a week or two of complaining about the hour of sleep we aren’t getting anymore. Every year I complain and wonder why we even bother with the changes anymore, so I started digging.
In the US it came up briefly as in a satirical essay by Benjamin Franklin around 1784, but more serious action didn’t take place until World War 1 after Germany started the trend in May of 1916. The practice floated around inconsistently across the country until the mid-60’s when a federal standard was introduced. As a bonus, this also solidified time zones across the US. This was also a time that communication and travel across the US was really starting to boom, and it just didn’t make sense anymore not to have a standard that was followed. Of course times continue to change and adjustments were made along the way to when the time changes would occur, but a lot of the reasons for introducing the time change in the first place aren’t as relevant anymore, so starting in 2015 there have been petitions to do away with the practice altogether.
Two US states, Arizona and Hawaii, don’t observe Daylight Saving Time, and from the sounds of it Florida is also trying to join them in abstaining. It is definitely worth noting that Arizona’s reasons for wanting to keep the hour of daylight in the morning so the evening can be enjoyed more due to the commonly scorching daytime temperatures is totally valid. And Hawaii is pretty much year round the same season so there really aren’t enough positives to make it worth making the change.
I, personally, am on team “get rid of the time change and leave it at summer hours”. But no matter which team you’re on, don’t forget that your clocks are jumping ahead an hour this weekend, on Sunday March 14!
Sources: Wikipedia, National Geographic