Time to spring forward ... a bit earlier than before

Daylight Saving Time begins tonight, thanks to the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, which moved the start of DST from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March. Some DST fun facts:

• Count that old spendthrift Benjamin Franklin among the first to suggest energy savings from changing folks' daily habits. He didn't call for moving the clock ahead, but he did, in 1784, calculate how many candles Paris could save by people rising earlier and going to bed earlier. Franklin suggested ringing church bells at sunrise and, if that failed to rouse Parisians, firing a cannon in every street "to wake the sluggards effectually."

• Congress first experimented with DST in 1918, to save energy during World War I.

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered year-round DST in 1942, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War II. That ended in September 1945.

• The federal Uniform Time Act of 1966 left DST decisions to state and local authorities but required uniform beginning and ending dates for any states or locales using daylight savings.

• At President Richard Nixon's behest, to address the 1970s energy crisis, Congress decreed that DST start on Jan. 6 in 1974 and Feb. 23 in 1975. After those two years, the starting date reverted to April.

• Neither Arizona nor Hawaii observes DST.

• Think the time change is confusing here? Consider Indiana. Our neighbors to the east fought among themselves for years over DST. A few counties observed DST; most did not. In 2006, state law moved all Indiana to DST, but some counties petitioned successfully to switch from the Eastern to Central time zone.

• A 1970s U.S. Department of Transportation study placed electricity-usage savings from Daylight Savings Time at 1 percent per day.

• A U.S. Department of Energy report on the effect of moving DST up to March is due to Congress in June.

• A 2007 study on electricity consumption in Indiana, conducted by two University of California-Santa Barbara researchers, concluded that the reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during DST is more than offset by higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons.

• The National Parent Teacher Association continues to oppose DST because of child safety concerns, like children walking to school and bus stops when daylight arrives later in the morning.

• The National Golf Course Owners Association, which strongly backed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, cannot quantify its gains but says more rounds of golf are played since the March onset of DST.

• DST now ends the first Sunday in November -- Nov. 2 this year.

Sources: National Geographic, CNN, Wall Street Journal, California Energy Commission, U.S. Department of Energy, National Parent Teacher Association, National Golf Course Owners Association.