Time to ‘fall back’, Victoria!
Daylight Saving Time (DST) is soon to reach its inevitable end on Sunday, November 3rd at 2 a.m., so if you’re still clinging on to your chunky designated alarm clock, make sure you set it back an hour on Saturday night before bed.
As many of you are already aware, this ‘fall back’ in time will mean extra light in the morning and a slightly earlier sunset—a true marker that November has indeed begun and winter is upon us.
Did you know that most people wrongly point to the farmers as the driving force for the continuation of DST? They actually did not favour it, contrary to most peoples’ understanding.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the earliest known proposal to ‘save’ daylight came from Benjamin Franklin’s An Economical Project, written in 1784. In it, he advocates for strategies to get people out of bed earlier.
It was again mentioned by William Willet in 1907 as he contemplated the importance of light for citizens who wish to take advantage of every second of daylight. However, people thought it was a ‘sinful’ idea because it would be lying about ‘true time,’ so the idea was dropped.
The actual implementation of DST didn’t occur until the First World War, when the Germans allegedly used it as a fuel-saving measure. The British were next in 1916, followed shortly after by North Americans in 1918.
Much of the early proposals were met with great criticism, and it is said that there’s still a great deal of scrutiny today as well.
DST disappeared for a short time after 1920 and was then revived when the Second World War began, and was again used to save fuel and energy.
Our current DST period was determined by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which went into effect in 2007—there are still a lot of questions as to whether the practice should continue.
With the clocks going back one hour, it means the sun will set earlier in Victoria.
Sunrise is set for 7:03 a.m. on Sunday after the time change, compared to 8:02 a.m. on Saturday.
Sunset is scheduled for 4:49 p.m. on Sunday, compared to 5:51 p.m. on Saturday.
Daylight saving time starts again on March 9th, 2025.
What do you think about DST?
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