BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — It’s that time of year again: time to change the time! daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, which means you’ll need to set your clocks back an hour before you go to bed on Saturday night.
The question is: why do we perform this ritual every year? That’s the question I’ll answer.
The idea of daylight saving time was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin during his time as an American delegate in Paris in 1784, in an essay. Standard time, which is what we go back to on Sunday, was instituted in the U.S. and Canada by the railroad system in 1883. It wasn’t until The Standard Time Act of 1918 that changing the clocks twice a year became the law of the land. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 provided standardization in the dates of the beginning and end dates of Daylight Saving Time in the U.S., allowed for local exemptions, and has remained, with some alterations, the reason for the clock changes twice a year.
Recently, The Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 would have made daylight saving time the new permanent standard time, but it never made it through Congress. Had it been passed and made law, it would have had a major impact on much of the United States in terms of when our latest sunrise time would occur in the winter.
By setting the clocks back an hour in the fall, we gain an hour of daylight in the morning, which can help us make better use of available daylight during normal wakeful hours.
So the next time you loathe the shortening days that take place this time of year, remember, it could still practically be dark just before 9 a.m. in Buffalo if we didn’t turn the clocks back in November.
