Editorial: Sunday is daylight saving time

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In accord with the mnemonic "Spring Forward, Fall Back," this Sunday we set our clocks forward one hour. We lose an hour of sleep, but it is the law -- the Energy Policy Act of 2005, to be precise.

That law set daylight saving time from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. And now that most of the country, with the exception of Hawaii and part of Arizona, are on the same page timewise, Congress will quit tinkering with it.

Juggling the clock to get more daylight at the end of the day is an old idea. Ben Franklin was a proponent. It began to take hold in Europe in 1916 when the warring nations adopted it to save energy and get more production out of the war workers. The U.S. adopted it for a year during World War I and three years during World War II, but repealed it come peacetime.

Daylight saving time was a matter of local option until Congress passed the Standard Time Act of 1966. Lawmakers started fooling with daylight saving again in the '70s during the energy shortage and, in 1974, actually moved the startup to Jan. 6.

The precise time for moving the clock forward is 2 a.m. Sunday. Why 2 a.m.? Because most people are at home and probably in bed, it affects the fewest people. Not much in the way of scheduled transportation is running at that hour, cutting down on the confusion. And the shift from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. can be accomplished across the continental U.S. before sunup.

The Energy Policy Act is silent on exactly when you should reset your clocks, so Saturday night before bed or Sunday morning after waking, it's up to you. The authorities do advise that as you go around the house resetting clocks you also check the batteries in your smoke detectors. Good advice.

Enjoy those long, light evenings. Somewhere around next Nov. 7, the first Sunday of the month, we will reconvene in this space to Fall Back.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)