by Ben Pursel

Quickly approaching is every American’s least favorite time of year—the “spring forward” portion of daylight savings. On March 10 at 2:00 am, we’ll have to say goodbye to the extra hour we’ve come to love so much. 

First proposed by founding father and prolific scientist Benjamin Franklin as a novel method of cutting back candle consumption, daylight savings would not reach the federal government until 1918. At the time, it was only a proposal to Congress, and an extremely unpopular one at that. Despite continual efforts from then-president Woodrow Wilson, the act failed to pass.

Following the failure of a nationwide daylight savings, power was given to the individual local governments as to how or if it should be implemented. The metropolitan areas of New York, most notably New York City, chose to observe daylight savings. The city’s position as the finance capital of the United States convinced many other localities to follow suit.

By 1962, having no consistent federal policy on daylight savings became an increasingly large issue for one of America’s fastest growing industries—transportation. This resulted in the first complete implementation of daylight savings under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Uniform Time Act of 1966, finally mandating that clocks would advance one hour beginning at 2:00 am on the last Sunday in April and turned back one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October.

The current model of daylight savings, however, was passed in 2005 with President George W. Bush’s Energy Policy Act that switched the beginning of daylight savings to the second Sunday in March and the ending to the first Sunday of November.

As it stands now, only two states have exempted themselves from the yearly clock jumping—Arizona and Hawaiii—with many more states and legislators calling for permanent daylight savings, with many others, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, proposing permanent standard time.

In a recent poll conducted by Business Insider, only 21% of Americans support changing the clocks twice a year, but 50% prefer permanent daylight savings and 31% prefer permanent standard time. So it is unlikely that daylight savings will be legislated out anytime soon, with the American public thoroughly split on the issue.