The concept of Daylight Savings Time, or the correct phrasing, Daylight Saving Time, has been around since the 1700s and has continued to be relevant today.
Yet, for some, it’s an outdated concept and they’d prefer to get rid of it. In spite of the debate, Daylight Saving Time is sticking around — at least for the time being
Here is why Daylight Saving Time, or DST for short, is still around.
Benjamin Franklin came up with the concept of Daylight Saving Time as a way to reset clocks during the summer months to conserve energy, according to the book Seize The Daylight.
Franklin’s theory was that by moving clocks forward, people could be more productive with an extra hour of daylight instead of wasting energy on lighting. When he was ambassador to Paris in 1784, he made the discovery that the sun provides light as soon as it rises.
But Daylight Saving Time, or DST for short, did not begin until more than a century later, according to Live Science.
In May 1916, Germany established DST to conserve fuel during World War I. The rest of Europe woke up to the idea not too long after, and pretty soon the U.S. followed suit in 1918.
Though President Woodrow Wilson wanted to abolish DST after World War I’s end, farmers objected because it meant they would lose an hour of sunlight.
It is a myth that Daylight Saving Time was put in place to help farmers, according to The Washington Post.
And so DST was abolished until World War II brought it back.
After the war ended, there was a period of a few years of letting states and municipalities decide on whether or not to establish DST.
To end this free-for-all, Congress enacted the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which stated that all states observing DST had to follow a uniform protocol that was statewide in which DST would begin in the spring and end in the late fall.
According to timeanddate.com, fewer than 40% of countries in the world observe DST.
The United States, of course, is one of them, as we still have Daylight Saving Time.
The countries that do observe DST use it to take advantage of one extra hour of daylight during the summer, as days get longer when Earth moves from winter and spring to summer.
Regions of the Earth that are located furthest from the equator reap the most benefit from DST because they experience more dramatic shifts in sunlight between seasons, according to Live Science.
In the U.S., every state except Arizona and Hawaii observes DST on a seasonal basis.
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Katherine Rodriguez can be reached at krodriguez@njadvancemedia.com. Have a tip? Tell us at nj.com/tips.
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October 27, 2021 at 06:45AM
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Why do we still have Daylight Savings Time? - NJ.com
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