DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME ENDS FOR 2010

Effective November 7 EST daylight saving time ends so the afternoon shift with schedule of  4pm will be reporting 5pm. With the rest, it will be one hour later against their programmed shift. For us Filipinos working in American environment call center, this change of schedule is baffling since we are use to Philippine Time. Our body clock will adopt this kind of schedule until Daylight Saving Time will resume on March 13, 2010. Is Daylight Saving time really beneficial to us Filipinos? It is like we are going around in circus. Moving the clock one hour later, the clock still rotates so our lives go on. The brainchild of Daylight Saving Time was  Ben Franklin.


Here is a bird's eye view of Daylight Saving time by Brian Handwerk

When does Daylight Saving Time really end in 2010?

For most Americans, daylight saving time ends in 2010 at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 7, when most states fall back to standard time. Time will spring forward again on March 13, 2011, when daylight saving time resumes.

The federal government doesn't require U.S. states or territories to observe daylight saving time, which is why residents of Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands won't need to turn back their clocks this weekend.

How and When Did Daylight Saving Time Start?

Ben Franklin—of "early to bed and early to rise" fame—was apparently the first person to suggest the concept of daylight savings, according to computer scientist David Prerau, author of the book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.

While serving as U.S. ambassador to France in Paris, Franklin wrote of being awakened at 6 a.m. and realizing, to his surprise, that the sun would rise far earlier than he usually did. Imagine the resources that might be saved if he and others rose before noon and burned less midnight oil, Franklin, tongue half in cheek, wrote to a newspaper.

"Franklin seriously realized it would be beneficial to make better use of daylight but he didn't really know how to implement it," Prerau said.

It wasn't until World War I that daylight savings were realized on a grand scale. Germany was the first state to adopt the time changes, to reduce artificial lighting and thereby save coal for the war effort. Friends and foes soon followed suit.

In the U.S. a federal law standardized the yearly start and end of daylight saving time in 1918—for the states that chose to observe it.

During World War II the U.S. made daylight saving time mandatory for the whole country, as a way to save wartime resources. Between February 9, 1942, and September 30, 1945, the government took it a step further. During this period daylight saving time was observed year-round, essentially making it the new standard time, if only for a few years.

Since the end of World War II, though, daylight saving time has always been optional for U.S. states. But its beginning and end have shifted—and occasionally disappeared.

During the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, the U.S. once again extended daylight saving time through the winter, resulting in a one percent decrease in the country's electrical load, according to federal studies cited by Prerau.

Thirty years later the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was enacted, mandating a controversial month long extension of daylight saving time, starting in 2007.

But does daylight saving time really save any energy?