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Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 13.
“Spring ahead, fall back” -- though a dusty, old adage -- does help folks remember to set their (analog) clocks forward an hour this time of year.
The change means that everyone gets more time to enjoy the sunset, which will be just after 7 p.m. on Sunday.
Digital devices such as smartphones and computers should automatically reset themselves.
Slugabeds can blame Ben Franklin for the twice-a-year clock-changing event, says National Geographic.
The founding father, scientist, and diplomat, came up with the idea in 1784, but in a way that deployed his infamous wit.
In a letter to the Journal of Paris, the thrifty Franklin suggested that costly candles could be replaced with free sunlight by having folks rise with the sun and hitting the sack earlier, the National Geographic story said.
He knew however, that implementing his idea wouldn’t be easy and humorously proposed taxing window shutters and shooting cannons off to rouse folks out of their beds.
Franklin may have been taking on the French for being lazy, but his idea took root and about a 100 years later, New Zealander George Hudson proposed the modern idea of Daylight Saving Time.
Germany and Austria-Hungary implemented it for the first time, nationwide, in the early 1900s, and many countries went on to adopt it – especially, it has been said, during the energy crunch of the 1970s.
So old Ben may have had something there, after all.
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