Once again, Americans have turned back time. By the time this blog officially launches on November 3, 2025, it will all be over. Americans will have changed time at 2:00 a.m. local time Sunday,  November 2.

Wait — What?

You mean you didn’t know we could control time? Benjamin Franklin suggested the concept in 1784 when he lived in Paris serving as the American ambassador to France.

Franklin observed in a somewhat satirical essay published in Journal de Paris that if Parisians adjusted their sleep schedules to rise earlier, they would need fewer candles and less lamp oil, which would save them money.

“Your readers, who with me have never seen any sign of sunshine before noon, and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early; and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes.”

The idea didn’t catch on.

Until, There Was Standard Railroad Time

To understand how Daylight Saving became a national mandate, we need to take a step back into the 19^th century. Prior to 1883, time was a simple matter. When the sun reached its highest observation point, it was noon. Of course, the sun can be fickle about its appearance. Sometimes, for example, there is cloud cover. And, the sun shines slightly differently in Boston, Massachusetts than it does in, for example, Charleston, South Carolina. Which meant that when it was noon in Boston, it was 11:43 a.m. in Charleston. At the time, it didn’t seem to matter, because it was unlikely a person in Boston would have a noon appointment in Charleston.

Except that railroad networks in North America were expanding, and differing local times made it impossible to compute accurate timetables. Enter Sandford Flemming, chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1878 he suggested dividing the entire world into time zones. There would be 24 meridians; each meridian would be 15 degrees away from the next meridian, creating a time difference of one hour.  On November 18, 1883, most railroads in the U.S. and Canada began operating on Standard Railroad Time in four different time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. 

With a few adjustments, the Interstate Commerce Commission introduced legislation to Congress, and on  March 19, 1918 Congress passed the Standard Time Act.

Daylight Time

At that time [pun intended], the U.S. was involved in World War I, and looking for ways to conserve resources. In 1916 Germany and other European countries involved in the war had introduced the concept of Daylight Time to reduce expenditures for electricity and coal. On March 31, 1918 the U.S. followed their example and introduced Daylight Time. Of course, the amount of daylight in a given day remained the same. But moving the clock forward reduced the number of daylight hours people would still be sleeping, and increase the hours they would be awake. Thus reducing the need to generate electricity for light and use coal for heating.

Despite the patriotic reasoning, changing time twice in the same month must have been unnerving. If you can’t count on time, what can you count on? Farmers, in particular, argued that changing clock time didn’t change when cows needed milking, chickens needed feeding, or crops needed harvesting before the day heated up. Under public pressure, Congress ended Daylight Time after the war was over. The United States continued on Standard Time until the next major war.

War Time

In an effort to reduce electricity usage that was higher in winter than summer, President Roosevelt introduced War Time, previously called Daylight Saving, on February 9, 1942. The president noted Lost Ground Can Always Be Regained – Lost Time, Never! and admonished Americans to Avoid Time Off, Avoid Time Out, and whatever you do, Don’t Slow Up The Ship!

Congress repealed War Time the last Sunday of September 1944. But unlike the change in 1919, many states and cities continued to enact daylight saving, and created a patchwork of time zones.

Uniform Time

In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act and returned the control of time to the federal government. In 1967 Standard Time became mandatory for all states, and Daylight Time was mandatory from the last Sunday in April through the last Sunday in October. States were allowed to opt out of Daylight Time, which Arizona promptly did (excepting territory occupied by the Navajo Nation). Today Hawai`i, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands also remain on Standard Time.

Most recently the Energy Policy Act of 2005 stipulated the present calendar dates for Daylight Saving beginning on the second Sunday in March and ending the first Sunday in November. The map at right indicates regions that alternate between standard time and daylight time in blue, and those that do not in orange.

Is the matter settled? No. Every spring and every fall the debate over the pros and cons of daylight saving continues. Statistics from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine show that about 63 percent of Americans would like to stop saving daylight, particularly since not that much energy is saved. Lighting uses less overall energy than it did a hundred years ago, and increasing daylight hours only serves to encourage people to use either more air conditioning or heating, depending on the weather.

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Illustrations & a Few Sources

You Can’t Stop Time; Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis, about 1785; The Sun; Sandford Fleming by John Wycliffe Lowes Forster 1892; Time Zones of U.S. 1913; Poster Issued by United Cigar Stores Company 1918; Don’t Slow the Ship, NARA 1942/3; Map of Daylight Savings in U.S. 2023. “Did Ben Franklin Invent Daylight Saving Time?” The Franklin Institute. Sleep Experts Want To Stop ‘Springing Forward’ to Daylight Saving Time. American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Ian R Bartky and Elizabeth Harrison. “Standard and Daylight-saving Time.” Scientific American. Vol. 240. No. 5. May 1979. 46-53. Veronique Greenwood. “The Dark Side of Daylight Saving Time.” Time. Nov. 1, 2025.

The post YOU CAN’T STOP TIME, BUT YOU CAN CHANGE IT first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.