5 things you may not know about daylight saving time

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — It’s time to fall back this weekend as daylight saving time (or just daylight time) ends. We all know this is part of a twice yearly time change, but what is it really all about? Here are some answers.

1. It’s the law in most places
According to the time experts at the US Naval Observatory, time zones and daylight saving time were established under US law in March 1918. Daylight saving time was repealed a year later. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 standardize the beginning and end of daylight time in the US, but allowed for local exemptions from its observance. Under the Uniform Time Act, daylight time began on the last Sunday in April and ended on the last Sunday in October, with the changeover to occur at 2 a.m. local time. Daylight time and time zones in the U.S. are defined in the U.S. Code, Title 15, Chapter 6, Subchapter IX – Standard Time. Some states, though, like most of Arizona and Hawaii do not observe DST.

2. The dates changed not too long ago
If you’re thinking to yourself that Daylight Saving Time used to started later and ended earlier in the year, you are correct. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed the starting and ending dates. As of 2007, daylight time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

3. Have another drink!
If last call in North Carolina is at 2 a.m., according to New Hanover County Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Jerry Brewer, that means you get an extra hour to drink Saturday night when the clock reaches 2 a.m. then falls back to 1 a.m. Back when last call in North Carolina was 1 a.m., state law provided a provision to extend the end of service time for alcohol to 2 a.m. during daylight saving time. That provision was repealed in 1991.

4. No. It wasn’t Ben Franklin’s idea
You’d probably be amazed at the number of things you take for granted that were ideas by founding father Benjamin Franklin, but daylight saving time was not actually one of them. Though he is often credited with being one of the originators of the idea, a post from Smithsonian Magazine says he suggested in a satirical letter to a French newspaper that Parisians could save on candles by waking up with the sun and went to bed when it got dark. The post says the idea is usually credited to George Vernon Hudson, a New Zealand artist and amateur bug collector who first proposed the idea in an 1895 pape.

5. It does actual create some savings
Daylight saving time does create some savings. A 2008 US Department of Energy says a study found DST saved about 0.5 percent in total electricity per day. That seems small, but the DOE says it adds up to electricity savings of 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours. That’s the amount of electricity used by more than 100,000 households for an entire year.