--- title: Daylight Saving Time: When Springing Forward Was Illegal description: You could be fined $100 or ten days in prison for showing the wrong time canonical: https://time.com/3717487/daylight-saving-time-1923/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-06T17:00:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T04:36:06.857Z article:section: History og:title: Daylight Saving Time: When Springing Forward Was Illegal og:description: You could be fined $100 or ten days in prison for 'springing forward' og:url: https://time.com/3717487/daylight-saving-time-1923/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltece738c3f373ca52/6987805ce53abaa88f4d7b31/dst.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: DST protest og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Daylight Saving Time: When Springing Forward Was Illegal twitter:description: You could be fined $100 or ten days in prison for 'springing forward' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltece738c3f373ca52/6987805ce53abaa88f4d7b31/dst.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # When Daylight Saving Time Was Illegal > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Mar 6, 2015 5:00 PM UTC  New York children protest daylight saving time in 1939 New York children protest daylight saving time in 1939 New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Mar 6, 2015 5:00 PM UTC When Daylight Saving Time begins this year on Mar. 8, Americans are likely to turn their clocks forward with a minimum of grumbling over the lost hour — at least compared to the objections that were raised when it was first implemented. The idea of moving the clock around in order to maximize the useful hours of sunlight, thus saving the fuel otherwise needed for lights, was originally a wartime idea. Individual localities might choose to move forward or back, but the end of World War I meant the end of federal daylight saving. The option to decide on a case-by-case basis led cities and states across the country to take up proverbial arms — or, rather, clock hands — for or against. The battle over the clocks raged for decades. People who liked having sunlight early in the day raged against those who privileged daylight in the evening. But few places had it as bad as Connecticut did in 1923, as TIME [reported](http://time.com/vault/issue/1923-04-07/page/6): --- > “” --- The law passed, forbidding the “willful display in any public building, street, avenue, or public highway of any time-measuring instrument or device, which is calculated or intended to furnish time to the general public, set or running so as to indicate any other than the standard time.” A state supreme court [upheld ](http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/buslj4&div=33&id=&page=)the law in 1924. But, clock-changers of Connecticut, fear not. 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