The History of Daylight Saving Time in the US

Daylight Saving Time ends in most of the United States a 2AM on Sunday, November 1st (Hawaii and Arizona have been on standard time all summer). We remember which way to set our clocks by thinking "spring forward, fall back." It makes you wonder how we ever got our clocks coordinated in the first place. Believe it or not, standard time and time zones were the railroad industry's idea.
"In the early 19th century … localities set their own time," said Bill Mosley, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

"It was kind of a crazy quilt of time, time zones, and time usage. When the railroads came in, that necessitated more standardization of time so that railroad schedules could be published."

In 1883 the U.S. railroad industry established official time zones with a set standard time within each zone. Congress eventually came on board, signing the railroad time zone system into law in 1918.

The 1918 law assigned the Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee the time zones, and legislated Daylight Saving Time. Later, the decision whether to observe DST was left up to the states. Link

Cue my semi-annual "standard, daylight, split the difference, pick something else, I really don't care, just pick something and STICK WITH IT!!!!" rant. I just don't see enough benefit to DST to be worth all the hassle of changing clocks around, scheduling problems, etc.
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Chalk up another vote for ditching the DST. The days get longer or shorter as they will no matter what our clocks say and having one less annoyance to deal with is fine by me!
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Obama was supposed to can DST- probably because he's recently had little kids and can understand how messed up people who live by the sun, not the clock, get by these things! It's a damn shame the tanked economy and foreign relations have gotten in the way of his following through with that initiative!
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