Enjoy weekend slumber as Daylight Saving Time ends

This year clocks will be turned back one hour on Sunday, October 29, in most parts of Canada and U.S, bringing a close to daylight saving time. This, however, will be the last time that this annual ritual is performed before Halloween. In 2007, Daylight Saving Time will begin one month earlier and will continue for an extra week.

Daylight saving time is a widely used system of adjusting the official local time forward, usually by one hour from its official standard time, for the summer months. This is intended to provide a better match between the hours of daylight and the active hours of work and school.

This year, Daylight Saving Time began on April 2 and will end at 2 a.m. October 29. Springing an hour ahead will come three weeks earlier next year, on the second Sunday of March, and the fall back will be a week later on the first Sunday of November. This means that in 2007, Daylight Saving Time will begin on March 11 and will end on November 4.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with first proposing the idea of Daylight Saving Time in 1784. Thereafter it was seriously proposed by William Willett in the "Waste of Daylight", published in 1907, but he was unable to get the British government to adopt it, despite considerable lobbying. The idea of DST was first put into practice by the German government during the First World War, between April 30 and October 1, 1916. Shortly afterward, the United Kingdom followed suit, first adopting it between May 21 and October 1, 1916. On June 17, 1917 Newfoundland became the first North American jurisdiction to adopt DST with the passing of the Daylight Saving Act of 1917.

The proposed extension of the Daylight Saving Time is a part of a phased move designed to conserve electricity and save an estimated 300,000 barrels of oil a year. In 2005, the United States decided to lengthen the daylight time period when it passed an energy bill. The idea is that shifting an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening reduces home power consumption by better matching waking time with daylight hours.

The main reasons behind changing daylight saving time are aptly put by Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who claims that the change translates into less electricity consumed, less crime, fewer traffic fatalities and more opportunities for outdoor recreation.

So as the switch to standard from daylight time happens in the wee hours of Sunday morning, people will get an extra hour of sleep.