DST 2007: Daylight Savings Time Change

When does Daylight Savings Time (DST) begin and end?
Get ready to spring forward on Sunday. Daylight Savings Time, as mandated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, will be undertaken three weeks earlier this year. According to the new pattern, instead of on the first week of April and on the last week of October, you will be turning your clocks forward by an hour at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday of March (11 March) and turning them back by an hour on the first Sunday of November (4 November).

What are the implications of Daylight Savings Time?
Turning the time forward seems a pretty simple thing to do and, indeed, to the general public, Daylight Savings Time is nothing more than an annoying annual Spring and Fall ritual that involves updating the household clocks and smoke detectors. But, given the importance of time stamped activities in our lives, the implications are greater for government organizations and businesses. There are some concerns currently about technical glitches in computers, PDAs, phones, watches, medical equipment, and other electronic devices as almost all are programmed to start Daylight Savings Time in April. Nothing on the mythical scale of the Y2K bug, but still important financial transactions being registered or taking place on the wrong day due to the time shift could cause a great deal of trouble.

Fortunately many business agencies have been planning for the time change several months in advance and so are not expected to be adversely affected. Your cell phone service provider will automatically update your time and, if you have the latest versions of Windows Vista and Office 2007 or Mac OS X, you won't have any issues with your computer. For older programs in Windows, the DST patch for Windows Server 2003 is available via Windows Update under software/optional, can be manually updated by downloading the patch from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931836, or by using the MS Tzedit utility available at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_topissues. For Mac updates, go to http://www.apple.com/support/downloads. For Blackberry updates, go to http://www.blackberry.com/DST2007/patch/index2.shtml. For Palm updates, go to http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/dsl.html.

What is the idea behind Daylight Savings Time?
The main idea behind Daylight Savings Time is to save valuable energy by aligning summer daylight hours with the waking hours that people keep. This way the use of lighting and appliances is trimmed considerably – even if more electricity is consumed by people who wake before sunrise, it is balanced by the energy reduction in the evening when they turn in early. According to a study undertaken in the 1970s, Daylight Savings Time saves around 1 percent of electrical energy daily, which seems insignificant until you consider that that translates to 100,000 barrels of oil per day. It is estimated that this will result in saving $320 million by 2020.

Daylight Savings Time is also supposed to lower the incidents of traffic accidents and crime, and boost the morale of people suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Since an hour of daylight is moved from morning to evening, people have more chance to enjoy it after work or school.

Not everyone is a fan however. Farmers complain that Daylight Savings Time interferes majorly with their regular work schedule. Information technology experts, as mentioned, are concerned about technical glitches. And critics point out that energy is not always saved. The clock shift aggravates sleep disorders and heightens the risks of accidents.

A certain online user gives his/her opinion about Daylight Savings Time: "It is worthless as air brakes on a turtle."

How did the idea of Daylight Savings Time come about?
The concept of Daylight Savings Time was first put forth by Benjamin Franklin in 'An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light', an essay written during his Paris sojourn and published in the Journal de Paris in 1784. It was a tongue-in-cheek piece of work, quite in line with his self-coined proverb 'Early to bed and early to rise/Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise', urging the French to rise early, get their work done in the sunlight hours, and save lamp oil and candle money by turning in earlier.

The Englishman, William Willett, took the idea more seriously, and lobbied vigorously and faced whole-scale ridicule in order to get it implemented in Great Britain in 1907. Quite in vain. Daylight Savings Time wasn't enforced until the First World World, first by the Germans and then by the rest of Europe and the USA for war-time energy conservation. It didn't prove popular with the general public and, in the USA, it was repealed only after nine months. It was reinstalled in the early years of World War II. In 1966, with the passing of the Uniform Time Act, it became a law intended to help businesses by standardizing Daylight Savings Time nationwide. However it wasn't compulsory and places like Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and some parts of Indiana ignored it.

Daylight Savings Time was extended for 2 years by the US Congress during the energy crisis in 1974. In 1986, it was revised, shifting the time change to start from the first Sunday of April instead of the last Sunday of April, while keeping the last Sunday of October as the end date.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 amended the Uniform Time Act to make Daylight Savings Time start in March and extend to November. If this doesn't result in more energy conservation, Congress has the right to return to the older schedule.

Canada has adopted the American Daylight Savings Time policy. In Europe, Daylight Savings Time begins on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October. There is no Daylight Savings Time in India, Japan, and China. It is also unnecessary in the Tropics and on the Equator as daylight hours are practically the same year round.