DST: Forgotten, But Not Gone

[Geee]

American Spectator:

What's "DST" you say? How quickly we forget. It's Daylight Saving Time. It's been gone only a couple of weeks and unless you haven't changed the clock in your car, this semi-annual nuisance is not even a memory.

It was first proposed by a New Zealander in 1895 and its cause taken up by a Briton a few years later. The United States first adopted it in 1918. It was widely believed at the time that President Woodrow Wilson wanted it so he could play golf into the evening hours. It has been with us in various configurations ever since. They are not simple. An encyclopedia description of "How It Works" takes up two pages.

Since 2007 in the U.S. it has begun the second Sunday in March and ends the first Sunday in November -- nearly two-thirds of a year. Before that it began the first Sunday in April and ended the last Sunday in October. The reason for this "mission creep" is the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which assumed that expanded DST would save large amounts of electricity. It has not.

Back in 1975, the U.S. Department of Transportation said that DST could reduce the nation's electricity usage by one percent during March and April. The next year the National Bureau of Standards found there had been no significant savings.