Daylight Savings Time 2011

Digital News Report – Daylight savings time is going to happen this Sunday, March 13, 2011. At 2 a.m., this is when most the United States will change their clocks to one hour ahead in order to adjust to the new current time. As you grumble about losing an hour of sleep this Saturday, here is some history and information about why we change our clocks each year.
Daylight Savings begins in the Spring and ends in the Fall. If you can remember that it is like a race for the year that you want to get ahead in the beginning of the year to hurry up to summer and in the Fall you want to fall back an hour to put off winter. There is another saying that is easy to remember. Spring ahead and Fall Back. Which is move one hour in advance in the Spring and in the Fall you go back one hour for the new current time.

atomic clocks

There are exceptions to which areas observe the Daylight Savings Time. Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the majority of Arizona don’t change their clocks and remain in standard time. The only place in Arizona that does participate in Daylight Savings is on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Indiana used to not participate in parts, but the state passed laws to make Daylight Savings Time observed statewide beginning in 2006.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 has extended the Daylight Savings Time period. Initially, the new law wanted to extend the time a whole two months, but was extended only three weeks earlier in the Spring, and one week more in the Fall. The reason for this was farmers and airlines said it would cause too many problems in their industries. Other countries might not observe, or have a different Daylight Savings Time schedule which can make it difficult to schedule flights. The farmers say that the livestock is affected by the shifting times.
Who originally thought up this idea of Daylight Savings? It turns out that it goes way back to Benjamin Franklin. He thought that setting the clocks for a person’s work day would help to extend daylight hours. This makes sense because there wasn’t any electricity back then. However, it wasn’t until London builder, William Willett promoted a pamphlet in 1907 suggesting adjusting the clocks in the spring and in the fall and its benefits. There is an online history lesson about daylight savings.