When Will Daylight Savings Begin in 2012?
For most Americans, daylight saving time 2012 will begin 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 11, when most states will spring forward an hour. Time will fall back to standard time again on Sunday, November 4, 2012, when daylight saving time ends.
Ben Franklin—of "early to bed and early to rise" fame—was apparently the first person to suggest the concept of daylight savings, according to computer scientist David Prerau, author of the book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.
**While serving as U.S. ambassador to France in Paris, Franklin wrote of being awakened at 6 a.m. and realizing, to his surprise, that the sun would rise far earlier than he usually did. Imagine the resources that might be saved if he and others rose before noon and burned less midnight oil, Franklin, tongue half in cheek, wrote to a newspaper.
"Franklin seriously realized it would be beneficial to make better use of daylight but he didn't really know how to implement it," Prerau said.
It wasn't until World War I that daylight savings were realized on a grand scale. Germany was the first state to adopt the time changes, to reduce artificial lighting and thereby save coal for the war effort. Friends and foes soon followed suit.
In the U.S. a federal law standardized the yearly start and end of daylight saving time in 1918—for the states that chose to observe it.**
Thanks NatGeo: http://news.nationalgeographic.com
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