SEATTLE — Well, it’s that time of year to say goodbye to the afternoon light.

When Americans go to bed Saturday night, they will sleep an extra hour. Clocks will change in the United States early Sunday morning at 2 a.m.

Sunset Sunday in Seattle will be at 4:47 p.m., but the days will continue to get shorter until the winter solstice on December 21.

The annual time change comes despite efforts by Washington lawmakers to keep the state on permanent daylight saving time (DST).

Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation in 2019 this would have allowed the state to move to permanent daylight saving time.

But the Sun Protection Act is at a standstill at the federal level. Without congressional approval, the legislation remains in limbo.

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A professor from the University of Washington was part of a coalition of sleep doctors pushing the federal government to get rid of daylight saving time last year.

Many people agree that they don’t like changing their clocks twice a year, whether they move forward or backward. But the main argument seems to be whether permanent standard time is the answer.

So why do we even have daylight saving time to begin with? Here are some facts about the time switch.

Who had the idea to change the clocks? It depends who you ask

The creation of DST is often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who first discussed the idea in a letter to the newspaper’s editor. Paris Journal in 1784. Franklin simply suggested Parisians wake up earlier to save money on lamp oil and candles, and more importantly, he wrote it as satire.

If you like daylight saving time as we know it today, you can thank New Zealand scientist George Vernon Hudson, who presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1895 in which he proposed an offset of two hours in October and a two-hour shift in March. . Although Hudson’s proposal generated interest and he followed it up with another paper in 1898, the idea never came to fruition.

Fast forward to 1905, and a man named William Willett came up with the idea of ​​moving clocks forward in the summer to take advantage of daylight in the mornings and lighter evenings. Willett’s idea was taken up by some legislators, who introduced legislation, but it met with strong opposition and Willett died in 1915 before his idea could become a reality.

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Germany was the first country to adopt summer time

DST was first adopted in Germany during World War I in 1916 to replace artificial lighting to save fuel for the war effort. It was quickly followed by Britain and many countries on both sides, including the United States.

Many countries returned to standard time after World War I, and it was not until after World War II that DST made a comeback and remained in many countries.

The Uniform Time Law

Daylight saving time was not standardized in the United States until the adoption of Uniform Time Act of 1966which allowed the federal government to oversee the time change.

The time change is now implemented in more than 70 countries around the world. Currently, most of the United States observes daylight saving time, except Hawaii and most of Arizona, as well as the U.S. island areas of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Samoa American and Guam.

The schedule was different

In the United States, Daylight Saving Time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. But this was not always the case.

According to AARPBefore the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which took effect in 2007, DST was observed from early April to late October.

It harms your health

Losing an hour of sleep every March can be detrimental to your well-being, according to sleep experts.

“The change to daylight saving time has been linked to an increase in heart attacks, strokes, traffic deaths and workplace accidents – and some sleep experts have called for an end to this phenomenon. ” according to AARP.

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Washington is not the only state that wants to stop changing the time

In recent years, at least 19 states have passed laws or passed resolutions to observe daylight saving time year-round, but implementing this change would require an update to federal law, which dates back to the Uniform Time Act.

Under this law, states can either observe daylight saving time as it is currently practiced or maintain standard time year-round, meaning there is no easy shortcut for those hoping for permanent change.

So, like it or not, don’t forget to turn your clock back one hour on Sunday, November 3 at 2 a.m.