Community Corner
Daylight Savings Time Ends November 7, 2021 At 2 A.M.
It Is Time To Fall Back When You Go To Bed On Saturday, November 6th. Don't Forget To Change The Batteries In Your Smoke Detector Too.
Happy Ending To Daylight Saving Time-Sunday, November 7, 2021.
Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday, November 7th at 2:00 A.M. Don’t forget to “Fall Back” when you go to bed on Saturday meaning turn your clocks backwards one hour.
How did America get in the habit of tampering with time? It started during the early days of our young nation. Benjamin Franklin was an advocate of day light saving time “to compel citizens to rise at the crack of dawn to save the expense of candlelight,” according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac article “Daylight Saving Time 2021: When Does The Time Change?”
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In 1784 he wrote “An Economical Project” in which he described his beliefs “Every morning, as soon as the Sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing: and if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street to wake the sluggards effectually…. Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, and it is probable that he will go willingly to bed at eight in the evening.”
It wasn’t until 1907 when William Willet of England who was a builder was taking a horse ride one morning. He observed that all of the homes appeared shuttered and people were still sleeping when the sun just rose. He too wrote a paper on the topic titled "The Waste of Daylight." In it he described "That so many as 210 hours of daylight are, to all intents and purposes, wasted every year is a defect in our civilization. Let England recognise and remedy it.” He lobbied businesses, Parliament and the U.S. Congress to get them "to put clocks ahead 20 minutes on each of the four Sundays in April and reverse the process on consecutive Sundays in September." But his efforts were mocked, and one town described his proposal as "sin of “lying” about true time."
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It wasn't until World War 1 the idea to save daylight received another boost. The Germans were the first to put daylight saving time to use in 1915 to save fuel consumption followed by England in 1916 with "British Summer Time: From May 21 to October 1," where they turned their clocks ahead one hour. The United States followed suit in 1917 when President Woodrow Wilson declared war and energy conservation became important. A lobbying campaign was begun by the National Daylight Savings Convention to enlist Americans to support this proposal. Finally, on March 31, 1918 Congress "declared that all clocks would be moved ahead one hour at 2:00A.M."
When WWI ended farmers and the working class demanded an end to daylight saving time because they believed it only benefited "office workers and the leisure class." It ended in 1920.
The infamous day of December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II Daylight saving time was restarted once again but this time year-round to save energy. After the war daylight saving time began being used inconsistently in different states "...beginning and ending on days of their choosing." As a result of this in 1966 Congress passed the Uniform Time Act. What this did was enact a consistent use of when the clocks were to be changed in both the spring and fall across the nation. During this time clocks went ahead on the "last Sunday in April and one hour back on the last Sunday in October."
In 1986, the United States Congress approved a law that increased the time of day light saving time to the first Sunday in April according to the Old Farmer's Almanac article. The goal was "to conserve oil used for generating electricity."
The current U.S. law the Energy Policy Act of 2005 went into effect in 2007. Thus, Daylight Saving Time changed again this time it is the second Sunday in March where we move our clocks ahead one hour and lose one hour of sleep. In the fall we set our clocks back an hour on the first Sunday in November at 2:00 A.M. which is November 7. On this day we gain an hour of sleep.
After you turn your clocks back one hour on Saturday night don’t forget to change the batteries in your smoke detector.
For more information about the end of Daylight Saving Time please see the following website:
https://www.almanac.com/content/when-daylight-saving-time
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