Spring ahead, fall back. This phrase is part of our conventions and customs similar to "30 days has September, April June....." and "beware the Ides of March".

Next Sunday (March 11) at 2 a.m. we will be changing to Daylight Saving Time. Beginning this year, Daylight Saving Time (note the correct term is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight Savings Time) is extended one month and begins for most of the United States at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and ends at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of November. The new start and stop dates were set in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

For several months each year, daylight saving time affects vast numbers of people throughout the world. DST impacts several domains including agricultural practices, street crime, the reporting of sports scores, traffic accidents, the inheritance rights of twins, and voter turnout. Dr. David Prerau recently wrote a book about DST,
Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time. In this informative, entertaining and often funny book, Dr. Prerau relates how since Ben Franklin's era to today, DST has led to intriguing stories of colorful personalities and serious technical issues, debatable costs and benefits, and conflicts between interest groups and government policy makers. Dr. Prerau includes how Benjamin Franklin conceived of the concept. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endorsed it. Winston Churchill campaigned for it. Kaiser Wilhelm first employed it. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt went to war with it, and more recently the United States fought an energy crisis with it.

An excellent comprehensive website about DST is the California Energy Commission's Saving Time, Saving Energy. And if you are interested in finding out more about timekeeping, see the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Walk through Time.

Or you may wish to check out some of the other books we have about time measurement including:
Time's Pendulum : the Quest to Capture Time-- From Sundials to Atomic Clocks by Jo Ellen Barnett,

Time : its Origin, its Enigma, its History by Alexander Waugh,

Time Telling through the Ages by Harry C. Brearley.

So please remember to set those clocks ahead next Sunday morning (March 11). You do not wish to arrive an embarrassing hour late for that Sunday morning engagement!