Daylight Saving Time Ends This Weekend

Daylight Saving Time ends in the United States at 2 a.m. on Sunday Nov. 1. So, if you don’t stay up until 2 a.m., you may want to set your clocks back one hour on Saturday night before you go to bed so you don't miss that extra hour of sleep in the morning.

Commonly referred to as the "fall back" weekend of the “Spring Forward, Fall Back” concept, Daylight Saving Time this weekend equates to gaining an hour of time for most of us in the USA. The U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and most of Arizona, however, don’t participate in DST.

The origins of DST are often argued. Some say the concept was the brainchild of American Benjamin Franklin, who, in a 1784 essay entitled "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light," suggested people get out of bed earlier in the morning to use the light instead of candles.

A century later, in 1895, New Zealander George Vernon Hudson, who collected insects in his free time, wanted more daylight time for his studies, so he presented a report to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two-hour daylight savings time program. A decade later, in 1905, British builder William Willett proposed the idea of DST, suggesting setting clocks ahead in April and switching them back in September. His idea caught the attention of Robert Pearce, who introduced a bill to the House of Commons in 1908. The concept was opposed by farmers in England and did not pass. It was Germany, in 1916, that was the first country to implement DST.

In the United States, we have the Uniform Time Act, established in 1966, to set a protocol for DST times/dates. As part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the length of DST in America was extended by four weeks, starting in 2007. At any rate, please don’t forget to change your clocks and your watches.