TULSA -- This Sunday morning at 2am, Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends for 2017. Even though we know to "spring forward" an hour in spring and "fall back" an hour in fall, do you know the history of where it came from in the first place?
A version of the idea was first proposed in 1895 by a British builder, William Willett, but there was little interest in the idea at the time.
Willett's idea was then introduced as a bill in the British House of Parliament in 1908 and the first Daylight Saving bill was drafted in 1909. However, the bill never made it into law because it was opposed by many, including farmers.
A small group of Canadians began turning clocks forward an hour back in 1908. It really came into use in 1916, during World War I, when Germany and Austria turned their clocks ahead one hour to save fuel, which was used for lighting. Soon after, other European countries, including the United Kingdom, began to advance their clocks by an hour. After World War I, the idea was abandoned in Europe until World War II.
A form of Daylight Saving Time, known as "fast time", was introduced in the US in 1918 but was repealed just seven months later, although, some of the bigger cities on the east coast, continued to use it.
In 1942, during World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, re-introduced the idea and it was implemented from February 1942 to September 1945.
From 1945 to 1966, there were no uniform rules for Daylight Saving Time in the US, which caused all kinds of confusion...especially for travel. So, in 1966, the Uniform Time Act was passed. Although it allowed states to opt out of Daylight Saving Time, it set up a nation-wide schedule of "springing forward" on the last Sunday in April and ending on the last Sunday in October.
Due to the 1973 oil embargo, from January 1974 to April 1975, Congress implemented a year-round Daylight Saving Time to study the effects of seasonal time changes on energy consumption.
From 1976 to 2005, the DST schedule was tweaked a few times. In 2005, the Energy Policy Act was passed to offset the United States' energy problems. Included in this act, was to add four extra weeks to DST. This resulted in DST starting the second Sunday of March and ending the first Sunday in November instead of the last week of October.
Today, close to 80 countries, roughly 40% worldwide, use Daylight Saving Time to make better use of daylight and for the conservation of energy.
At this time, most of the US still uses DST except for Arizona (minus Navajo lands), Hawaii, and overseas territories of Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
