Springing Forward

Daylight Saving Time is coming up again. On Sunday, April 2, at two o'clock in the morning, the clock will spring forward one hour. The purpose of Daylight Saving is to take an hour of daylight away from the morning and transfer it to an hour longer of daylight in the evening. This conserves energy as families will not have to turn on their electrical lights for an additional hour as there will be more sunlight.

The concept of Daylight Saving was introduced by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, while he was a minister to France. He published his idea in an essay titled, "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light." His idea was not mentioned again until 1907, when an Englishman, William Willet, proposed the idea.

Daylight Saving was put into place in 1918 for the last years of World War I to help conserve money and energy. However, no one seemed to like the idea and the law was repealed. After this, some areas of America continued to use the Daylight Saving technique while other areas abandoned the idea. Obviously, this caused too much confusion and as a result of this, The Uniform Time Act of 1966 was put into place. This law announced that in April, the clock would spring forward one hour and in October the clock would fall back one hour so that no time would actually be lost.