Daylight Saving Time: 10 Points You Need To Know

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What exactly is Daylight Saving Time, you ask? It’s the practice of advancing your clocks and other devices by an hour during the summer months in order to experience daylight an hour longer. Doing so sacrifices the usual sunrise time, but Daylight Saving Time – better known as DST – aims to reduce evening use of incandescent lighting while benefiting businesses in retail, sports, and other activities or establishments that exploit daylight after work hours. Itching for more on the topic? Here are 10 facts all about DST!

Fact 1: Day Light Saving Time came to be when a man named George Hudson from New Zealand proposed the idea back in 1895. Germany and Austria-Hungary led the way for the implementation throughout the whole nation. Since then, countries have turned to using DST as a way to conserve energy, especially since the energy crisis back in 1970.

Fact 2: The downside to Daylight Saving Time would be the clock shifts complicating time keeping, as well as disrupting travel, billing, record keeping, medical devices, and even sleep patterns. Although computer soft wares are capable of adjusting to the time automatically, policy changes by certain jurisdictions are a bit more confusing.

Fact 3: 1996 marked the year that the United States Congress had the newly created Department of Transportation implement DST. Because localities had their own time zones and railroad schedules and the like became too time consuming and confusing, Daylight Saving Time and the issuing of a standard time was a welcome relief.

Fact 4: It was through Englishman William Willet’s work that the implementation of Daylight Saving Time came to be. He led a campaign that urged the people to move their clocks forward by 80 minutes during the months of April until October in order for everyone to be able to enjoy the natural morning light more.

Fact 5: The first country to ever implement Daylight Saving Time was Germany. After World War I, the country embraced DST in order to cut back on electricity costs and conserve energy. The practice was a success and soon after, the United Kingdom and other countries followed suit.

Fact 6: To date, Hawaii and Arizona do not follow Daylight Saving Time. Other United States territories that remain on standard time include Guam, The Virgin Islands, Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Fact 7: Benjamin Franklin was thought to have been behind the concept of Daylight Saving Time when he created a satirical piece claiming that Parisians could save could save a modern day estimate of 200 million USD if they simply woke up dawn. By being an economy that ran on sunshine instead of candles, that is. Benjamin Franklin is often credited for giving birth to the idea of DST, although all he ever proposed was a change in sleeping schedules.

Fact 8: The practice of Daylight Saving Time can be traced all the way back to the time of Ancient civilizations, where evidence of early Romans using different water clocks and scales during different months throughout the year.

Fact 9: Daylight Saving Time in the United States begins at 2:00 in the morning on the second Sunday of March and ends at 2:00 in the morning on the second Sunday of November, while the practice begins at 1:00 a.m. GMT on the last Sunday of March and ends 1:00 a.m. GMT on the last Sunday of October for European countries.

Fact 10: Daylight Saving Time gave way to the concept of “Summer Time”, the months where the days are longest and the nights are shortest. A study conducted in 2005 stated that 70% of Americans rose before 7 in the morning.

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