Daylight Saving Time

Today is the day we move our clocks ahead one hour, which means we probably all lost an hour of sleep last night. At least I hope you all turned your clocks back. If you did not, consider this your reminder.

Turning our clocks ahead in the spring and back in the fall is something we do every year and probably give very little thought to. But, this year I got to thinking about it and wondered where and when this whole concept started, so I searched the web for some answers.

The first thing I found out was that it is not Daylight Savings Time as I always thought, but it is Daylight Saving Time (no “s” at the end of saving).  So, if you will notice, I am now calling it  “Daylight Saving Time”.I also thought the concept was fairly new, but through my research I found the idea started way back with Benjamin Franklin. It seems as if he was awakened at 6 AM one morning, and was very surprised to find the sun streaming into the room. Obviously, he was not awake often at that time of  the morning and did not realize how early the sun rose. But, this got him to thinking about how all this sunlight was wasted while people were sleeping. He thought if this light would be later in the day, it could save a lot of candles, and that was where the concept of Daylight Saving Time was born. Although it probably would have saved a lot of candles, the idea did not catch on for about 200 years.

You know, I think I would have liked Benjamin Franklin. He had a solution for everything!

 Read more about this and other little known and interesting facts about Daylight Saving Time and enjoy your extra hour of daylight this evening!