What is it? Why do we do it?
Daylight-savings time (DST) is the advancing of the clock one hour ahead of the local standard time in order to increase the hours of daylight available at the end of the day.
The idea originated with none other than Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s. But it didn’t really catch on until WWI when England and Germany put it into practice as a wartime measure for making full use of daylight hours. By 1925, it became permanent in England.
The U.S. also took advantage of daylight savings for both World Wars, but it didn’t become a permanent fixture for most states until the oil crisis in the mid-1960′s. Now, all but two states in the U.S.(Arizona and Hawaii) observe DST.
Sources:
Summer Time. (2002). In Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable.
Worldatlas.com. (2014, Oct. 10). Daylight savings time: The exceptions. Retrieved from http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/daylight-savings-exceptions.htm
