If you live in an area that observes Daylight Savings Time, it’s almost time to roll your clocks back. Europeans turn back the clock tomorrow(October 28) at 1 a.m.; Americans make the change on November 4, at 2 a.m.
Daylight Savings Time, originally conceived by Ben Franklin, was first proposed in 1907, though it wasn’t widely adopted until 1916 as a wartime measure to use less coal. Though this original aim is no longer a goal, Daylight Savings Time does reduce energy consumption enough that the US Congress mandated in 2005 that DST be expanded by about a month.
If you’ve ever had a problem remembering how to change your clock, just remember to “Spring forward, Fall backward.” Although the end of DST means the days are shorter, we do get to repeat an hour (when the clock strikes 2 a.m., you’ll set it back to 1 a.m.), which means we get a whole extra hour of sleep.
That’s a benefit we can all appreciate.
