WSET.com - ABC13Getting Ready to Fall Back by Lyndsay Tapases

It's almost that time of the year again, when we "fall back," or set our clocks back an hour to end another season of Daylight Saving Time. In preparation for the end of Daylight Saving this year (this Sunday, November 7th) I thought it might be interesting to take a look back over the history of the tradition.

It was Mr. "Early-to-bed-early-to-rise" himself (Benjamin Franklin) who is first thought to have conceived the notion in 1784, although he did not exactly propose Daylight Saving in its current sense. Rather, he suggested that Parisians could save thousands of Francs a year on candles by simply awakening earlier in the summer to take advantage of the daylight.

It was not until over a century later, in 1895, that George Vernon Hudson of New Zealand proposed the actual idea of a two-hour daylight saving time-shift. However, his suggestion didn't go over too well, and the practice wasn't actually implemented until World War I in 1916. Germany and its allies were the first to use Daylight Saving Time in order to conserve coal during the winter. The United States followed suit in 1918, however the practice was so unpopular it was repealed a year later.

Daylight Saving Time was reinstated by Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, again as a measure to conserve energy resources. But once the war ended in 1945, it was no longer mandated by federal law, and the result was a confusing time inconsistency amongst relatively close locales that created more problems than it solved. For example: bus drivers operating between Moundsville, WV, and Steubenville, OH, once crossed over SEVEN different time zones in a distance of only 35 miles!

It was not until 1966 that Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which regulated Daylight Saving nationwide. It was to begin on the last Sunday of April and last through the last Sunday of October. Any state that should choose to be exempt would be allowed to by passing a state law, as long as it exempt the entire state (currently, Arizona and Hawaii are the only states that remain on "standard time" year-long).

There have been a handful of minor modifications over the years, with the most recent coming in 2007, in response to President Bush's Energy Policy Act. This extended Daylight Savings by four-to-five weeks, from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday of November, which brings us to where we are today. So don't forget to set your clocks back an hour early Sunday morning, and enjoy the extra hour of sleep!