On March 13 at 3 a.m. ET, most US states began over eight months of daylight-saving time by "springing forward" and moving their clocks an hour ahead, losing an hour of sleep, and trading a later sunrise for more sunlight at the end of the day.
Thinkers including Benjamin Franklin, the New Zealand scientist George Hudson, and the Englishman William Willett advocated for plans that would give them more sunlight in the day going all the way back to the 18th and 19th centuries.
The US and several European countries enacted daylight-saving time during World War I and World War II as an energy-conservation measure and kept it during peacetime.
Today, most of the US, with the exception of Hawaii, Arizona, and many US territories, recognizes daylight-saving time. While many northern states appreciate the extra hour of sun, some states that experience unbearable heat in the summer prefer an hour of nighttime instead and stay on standard time all year round.
There are other states and lawmakers, however, that want more sun. Several states have taken action to make daylight-saving time permanent, and a bipartisan group of senators is now making a renewed push to make daylight-saving time last all year nationwide.
Here's the full history of daylight-saving time in the US.
The idea for daylight-saving time is attributed to thinkers including Benjamin Franklin, scientist George Hudson, and a British man named William Willett, who published a pamphlet in 1907 titled "The Waste of Daylight," which argued for an extra 80 minutes of sunlight in the summer.William Willett.
While Britain didn't act on Willett's proposal at the time, Germany implemented daylight-saving time during World War I as a way to conserve electricity by maximizing sunlight."At close grips with the Hun, we bomb the corkshaffer's, etc." Two United States soldiers run past the remains of two German soldiers toward a bunker. Note that this may well be a staged propaganda image.
"They remembered Willett's idea of moving the clock forward and thus having more daylight during working hours," the author and historian David Prerau told National Geographic. "While the British were talking about it year after year, the Germans decided to do it more or less by fiat."Daffodils in Duesseldorf, Germany.
The US also implemented national daylight-saving time during World War I under President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 —but Congress later repealed the measure in 1919.President Woodrow Wilson.
Multiple studies, however, have since concluded that daylight-saving time has no or negligible benefits when it comes to energy conservation.FILE - In this May 25, 2017, file photo, the Milton R. Young Station lignite coal-fired power plant near Center, N.D., glows as dusk blankets the North Dakota prairie landscape.
It's a common misconception that farmers pushed for daylight-saving time in the US to get more time to work outside in the fields.FILE - In this Sept. 3, 2002 file photo, farmer John Hawk looks over his land as his seed onion fields are watered in Holtville, Calif.
Because farmers' schedules revolved around sunlight and not the clock, a change in the amount of sunlight threw their entire workday out of whack. Agricultural groups were behind the effort to repeal daylight-saving time in 1919.
After the national repeal of daylight-saving time in 1919, many individual states and cities continued to adjust their clocks twice a year, but at varying days and times, in what Time magazine characterized in 1963 as "a chaos of clocks."Electric Time Company employees Dan LaMoore, right, and James Simonini test the lights in three large clocks being constructed at the company's production facility in Medfield, Mass.,
The History Channel reported that at the time, "passengers on a 35-mile bus ride from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, passed through seven time changes."West Virginia.
In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which set daylight-saving time to begin and end at the same time nationwide. Since 2005, daylight-saving time has begun on the second Sunday in March and ended on the first Sunday in November.A reminder to change clocks back from day-light savings time in the fall from Brooklyn, New York, in 1964.
Hawaii, most of Arizona, and a number of US territories do not, however, recognize daylight-saving time — largely because nighttime brings cooler, more pleasant temperatures than the heat during the day.Hawaii.
"In the summer, everybody loves to have an extra hour of daylight in the evening so they can stay out another hour," Prerau told National Geographic. "In Arizona, it's just the opposite. They don’t want more sunlight, they want less.”Sunset over the Arizona desert.
While states can voluntarily opt-out of recognizing daylight saving time or choose to be on daylight-saving time all-year-round, they must pass an act of legislation and obtain approval from the US Congress.
Jeffrey Greenberg/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Lawmakers in over a dozen states have passed legislation or resolutions in recent years to make daylight-saving time permanent in their states. But those bills haven't been able to go into effect absent congressional action.
Some studies have linked the decrease in sleep associated with daylight-saving time to negative health effects, such as increases in heart attacks, car accidents, and workplace injuries.Houston Fire Department medics transport a man to a hospital after he suffered cardiac arrest on August 11, 2020 in Houston, Texas.
In March of 2019, the European Parliament voted to permanently end daylight saving time in the European Union effective in 2021, letting individual countries decide whether to operate on permanent "summer time" or "winter time."A Union Jack flag is lowered at half-mast in honor of the victims of the Manchester attack, outside the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium May 23, 2017.
A bipartisan group of US Senators are on a renewed push to make daylight-saving time permanent all-year-round in states that currently recognize it.People walk along the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, near the U.S. Capitol and Washington Monument.
Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images
The Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, is co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 13 senators.
"In a year that feels like it's been in complete darkness, Senator Rubio and I have provided a solution to provide more sunlight by making Daylight Saving Time permanent," GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, one of the bill's co-sponsors, said. "I don't know a parent of a young child that would oppose getting rid of springing forward or falling back. Congress created Daylight Saving decades ago as a wartime effort, now it is well past time to lock the clock and end this experiment."
Сотрудники «ЯРКО» приняли участие в Летней Спартакиаде «Газпром-Медиа Холдинга»
Совладелец «ТЕХНОНИКОЛЬ» Игорь Рыбаков запустил на Дальнем Востоке бизнес-клуб «Эквиум»
Зарема о Виллиане Жозе в «Спартаке»: «Бразилец в Москве обязательно найдет, чем заняться поинтереснее футбола. Сравнения с Мозесом неактуальны, Амарал берет игрока на закате карьеры»
Иванникова Наталья прошла в полуфинал конкурса «Лидеры строительной отрасли»
