Saturday, March 9, 2013

How much sleep have I lost worrying about daylight saving time? Eagle Archive by Kevin Dayhoff

How much sleep have I lost worrying about daylight saving time?

Eagle Archive

By Kevin E. Dayhoff November 10, 2012


A full week later, I'm still savoring the extra hour of sleep I got last Sunday morning at 2 a.m. when daylight saving time officially ended for 2012.

Of course, I lost that hour in the days since, lying awake thinking about the history of daylight savings time. The March 7, 1947, edition of a local Westminster paper carried an article which gives us some insight into almost a century of controversy over daylight saving time.

Ben Franklin is credited with advocating the value of "daylight saving," in 1784, in a satirical, anonymous letter to the editor of the Journal of Paris. In it, he proposed, among many humorous remedies to the overuse of candles, a tax on shutters, to be enforced by stepped-up police vigilance and the rationing of candles.

It was not until the Standard Time Act was enacted March 19, 1918, that daylight saving time was established in the United States. It was so controversial that it was promptly repealed in 1919.

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, it was re-established nationally early in World War II, and was continuously observed from February 1942 to September 1945. After the war, its use was determined locally among states, counties and communities…

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