Another teacher shared this information with me about Daylight Savings Time. I thought you might want to know why we gain an hour in the fall and loose and hour in the spring.
Daylight Saving Time has been used in the U.S. and in many European countries since World War I. At that time, in an effort to conserve fuel needed to produce electric power, Germany and Austria took time by the forelock, and began saving daylight at 11:00 p.m. on April 30, 1916, by advancing the hands of the clock one hour until the following October. Other countries immediately adopted this 1916 action: Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey, and Tasmania. Nova Scotia and Manitoba adopted it as well, with Britain following suit three weeks later, on May 21, 1916. In 1917, Australia and Newfoundland began saving daylight.
The plan was not formally adopted in the U.S. until 1918. 'An Act to preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States' was enacted on March 19, 1918. [See law <http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/usstat.html> ] It both established standard time zones and set summer DST to begin on March 31, 1918.
