Daylight Saving Time

Apparently, in 1784 Ben Franklin worked out while finishing out his days in Paris as the American Ambassador to France, that in the evening hours shopkeepers and late-nighters were using alot of oil in their lamps the stay up later in the evening once the sun had gone down. He actually worked out how much;

"183 nights between 20 March and 20 September times 7 hours per night of candle usage equals 1,281 hours for a half year of candle usage. Multiplying by 100,000 families gives 128,100,000 hours by candlelight. Each candle requires half a pound of tallow and wax, thus a total of 64,050,000 pounds. At a price of thirty sols per pounds of tallow and wax (two hundred sols make one livre tournois), the total sum comes to 96,075,000 livre tournois."

So he wrote an opinion paper titled "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light." In short- he felt that by changing the clocks, people would make more use of natural sunlight, and would need to use artificial light less, thus saving energy and increasing productivity during daylight hours.

Under legislation enacted in 1986, Daylight Saving Time in the United States begins at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of April and ends at 2:00 a.m. on the last Sunday of October, so after this morning, Daylight saving time is over- and will resume next spring. In other words- we are on standard time in the winter months.

In 2007, DST will be extended for four weeks in the States, once again citing energy savings as the reason.