The clock may be running out on daylight saving time — but what does that mean?
The US Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously to rescind the twice-a-year shift in our clocks, a controversial measure designed to maximize sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere.
Here’s a look at daylight savings time and how it could affect you if the House and President Joe Biden agree to scrap it.
The US Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously to rescind the twice-a-year shift in our clocks, a controversial measure designed to maximize sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere.
Here’s a look at daylight savings time and how it could affect you if the House and President Joe Biden agree to scrap it.
- If the measure becomes law, the clocks would not “fall back” by one hour in November and remain at standard time permanently — without having to “spring ahead” in March, the bill says.
- The US first adopted DST in 1918 during World War I and rescinded the following year, then brought back during World War II — but wasn’t regulated by the federal government until 1966, when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act.
- In 1974, President Richard Nixon again pulled the plug, but the move proved so unpopular with Americans — including parents who feared sending their kids to school in the dark — that President Gerald Ford later hit the reset button.
- Ben Franklin is widely credited with coming up with the idea of daylight savings time in a satirical piece in the Journal de Paris in 1784, National Geographic says.
- Not all of the USA observes DST — Hawaii, most of Arizona, Puerto Rico and US territories, including Guam and the US Virgin Islands are not affected by the twice-a-year clock change, the US Energy Department says.
- If the Senate proposal — called the Sunshine Protection Act — is ultimately enacted, it wil take effect in the fall of 2023 and would mark the third time in US history that DST has been shelved.
