The clock may be running out on the biannual headache of Daylight Saving Time — but what does that mean?
The US Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously to do away with the twice-a-year shift in our clocksby making Daylight Saving Time permanent.
Here’s a look at the history of Daylight Saving Time and how it could affect you if the House and President Joe Biden approve the measure.
If the Sunshine Protection Act is passed, Americans will no longer adjust the hour forward or backward. Getty Images/iStockphoto
The House of Representatives will soon vote on the Sunshine Protection Act, which erases the biannual tradition of switching the clock. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File- If the measure becomes law, the clocks would not “fall back” by one hour in November and remain at Daylight Saving 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- The US first adopted DST in 1918 during World War I and rescinded it the following year, then brought back during World War II — but wasn’t regulated by the federal government until 1966, when Congress passed the Uniform Time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 will take effect in the fall of 2023 and would mark the third time in US history that DST has been shelved.
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