All about Daylight Saving Time

 

A reminder: Set your clocks ahead one hour before you go to bed Saturday night, unless you're the type of person who likes to get up at 2 a.m. Sunday. That's when Daylight Saving Time officially arrives.

Many people think Daylight Saving Time (note that it is not "savings") has been with us forever, or close to it. However, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 codified it when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Public Law 89-387 on April 12, 1966, ordering DST to begin on the last Sunday of April and to end on the last Sunday of October.

The history of DST, however, isn't that simple.

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had instituted year-round Daylight Saving Time, then called "War Time," to run from February 9, 1942, to September 30, 1945. As it turns out, that was 18 days before the war officially ended, and from 1945 until the 1966 LBJ signing there was no federal law regarding DST, so states and localities were free to choose whether or not to observe DST and when it would be in effect.

As noted on WebExhibits.com, "This understandably caused confusion, especially for the broadcasting industry, as well as for railways, airlines, and bus companies. Because of the different local customs and laws, radio and TV stations and the transportation companies had to publish new schedules every time a state or town began or ended DST."

In 1972, Congress revised the law to provide that, if a state was in two or more time zones, it  could exempt the part of the state that was in one time zone while providing that the part of the state in a different time zone would observe DST. The Federal law was amended in 1986 to begin DST on the first Sunday in April.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended DST in the U.S. beginning in 2007, though Congress retained the right to revert to the 1986 law should the change prove unpopular or if energy savings were not significant. From 2007 forward, DST was codified to be what it is today.

In most Western European countries, Daylight Saving Time begins at 1 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on the last Sunday of March and ends at 1 a.m. GMT on the last Sunday of October, Observance of Daylight Saving Time elsewhere in the world is highly variable. 

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