History of Daylight Saving Time Dates Back Centuries

Posted: November 2, 2022 11:27 am

Where Does the Sunshine Protection Act Stand Now?

Be sure to mark your calendars. This Sunday is the time of the year when most Americans set back their clocks one hour. Could this weekend be the last time that the country leans on daylight savings time?

Details of Sunshine Protection Act of 2021

The clocks will officially fall back to standard time at 2 am ET on November 6. However, some lawmakers are pushing to end the practice of changing the clocks twice a year. The U.S. Senate passed a bill last March that would make daylight saving time the permanent practice. This bill is now stalled, putting the strategy into question.

Known as the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, this legislation was first introduced by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. The senator and the bill’s other proponents said that crime rates and car accidents would fall if daylight saving time became the permanent practice. The bill’s supporters were aiming to make this change on November 5, 2023.

States that have areas exempt from practicing daylight saving time may decide to keep standard time. For example, Arizona and Hawaii are the two U.S. states that do not switch over to daylight saving time once per year. In addition, the territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands also do not observe daylight saving time.

The U.S is not the only country deciding if they want to keep the practice as a standard. Mexico is currently reevaluating the practice. A bill that would eliminate the use of daylight saving time in most major cities has already passed through one house of Congress last week and is now set to land on the desk of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for final approval. The bill states that the change would not apply to the cities that are located along the border with the U.S.

History of Daylight Saving Time

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin was the first American to introduce the concept of daylight saving time. He first made the suggestion while living in Paris in 1784, believing that Parisians could save resources lighting candles if they went to bed when the sun went down and woke up when it rose in the morning sky rather than fighting it.

It was over 100 years later when New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson recommended that his country move forward two hours in October and move backward two hours in March. However, this proposal was met with criticism and quickly abandoned.

The first daylight saving time approach was finally implemented in 1918 in Germany. The nation made the move to turn the clocks ahead one hour in an effort to reduce the need for fuel for lighting during World War I. It did not take long for other European countries to jump on the idea with France, the United Kingdom, and Austria quickly adopting the practice.

The U.S. adopted the idea in 1918 after a proposal by Robert Garland. The legislation was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. However, this law was repealed just seven months later at the conclusion of World War I.

The practice came back en vogue during World War II with some areas of the country adopting the time change and others shunning the idea. As you can imagine, this created much confusion until the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was put into effect by the U.S Department of Transportation. This piece of legislation split the nation into different time zones while also designating the official start and end times for daylight savings.

The question now remains: will this practice be abolished once again if the Sunshine Protection Act wins out?

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