Daylight Saving Time ends Sunday

This is the weekend to gain an extra hour of sleep, as Daylight Saving Time ends and everyone sets their clock back one hour Sunday morning.

The website, standardtime.com, explains some of the history of Daylight Saving Time, saying that it began in the United States during World War I, primarily to save fuel by reducing the need to use artificial lighting. Although some states and communities observed Daylight Saving Time between the wars, it was not observed nationally again until World War II.

The Uniform Time Act of 1966 provided the basic framework for alternating between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time, now observed in the United States.

The system of beginning DST at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in April and ending it at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October was not standardized until 1986. The rules changed again in 2007 when Congress passed a law extending Daylight Saving Time from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November.

According to standardtime.com, the earliest known reference to the idea of Daylight Saving Time comes from a purely whimsical 1784 essay by Benjamin Franklin, called “Turkey versus Eagle, McCauley is my Beagle.” It was first seriously advocated by William Willet, a British builder, in his pamphlet “Waste of Daylight” in 1907.

Over the years, supporters have advanced new reasons in support of DST, even though they were not the original reasons behind enacting DST.