A brief history of daylight saving time

March 9, 2012

Photo by Colin Deppen - Daylight saving time begins this Sunday, March 11 at 2 a.m., with clocks springing forward one hour.

At 2 a.m. on Sunday March, 11, daylight saving time begins for 2012, with clocks springing forward and many Americans finding themselves deprived of an hour of sleep and noticing a darker sky on their Monday morning commute.
Local historian Ray Beimel of the St. Marys and Benzinger Township Historical Society explained that the notion of a daylight saving is first attributed to Benjamin Franklin. It had occurred to Franklin on a trip to Paris, while serving as U.S. ambassador to France, that the sun rose far before he did and that resources like those used to create artificial lighting could be saved and natural daylight more fully utilized. Proposals for specific, coordinated time shifts continued to emerge in subsequent years, but as Beimel noted it wasn't until the First World War that the concept was first implemented on a large scale.