Don’t forget to turn clocks back on Sunday

This is the weekend to gain an extra hour of sleep as Daylight Saving Time ends and clocks are set back one hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning.

According to the website standardtime.com, Daylight Saving Time 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 Daylight Savings Time 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 starting Daylight Saving Time three weeks earlier and ending it one week later.

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 Daylight Saving Time even though they were not the original reasons behind enacting it.