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At 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, clocks in most parts of the country will fall back one hour to standard time as daylight saving time ends. While gaining an hour of sleep this weekend, people across the country will also be losing an hour of daylight in the evening.
Standard time is the local time for a country or region when daylight saving time is not in use. In the U.S., standard time is in use from the first Sunday in November until the second Sunday in March.
The idea to end a permanent standard time and move to DST was introduced by American founding father and scientist Benjamin Franklin way back in 1784. While working in Paris as an ambassador to the U.S. he wrote an essay titled “An Economical Project” and submitted it to the editor of the Journal de Paris. Franklin argued that Parisians would save a lot of money on candles if they woke up at the time of sunrise and went to bed closer to sunset.
However, the concept of DST wasn’t fully conceived until more than a century later. In 1895, New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson wrote a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift backward in March. He was criticized and mocked for the proposal, as it was said to be confusing.
It wasn’t until 1916, two years into the First World War, when a year-round standard time was first removed in favor of a temporary DST. Germany, one of the most powerful European countries at the time, decided to turn every clock in the country one hour ahead. The goal was to minimize the use of artificial lighting so that fuel could be saved for war efforts. Soon after, other European countries — including Austria, France and the United Kingdom — followed suit.
In the U.S., however, this change took longer to take hold.
In 1918, toward the end of the war, Pittsburgh native Robert Garland introduced the idea after his visit to the U.K. After presenting the idea, it was signed and approved by President Woodrow Wilson on March 8 of that same year, bringing an end to permanent standard time.
Only seven months later, as the war came to a close, DST was repealed, which brought back a year-round standard time once again. However, the departure from DST was short-lived as the second world war brought back DST, ending the permanent standard time.
