Daylight Saving Time Is This Weekend. Here's What You Need to Know

As Nov. 5 approaches, it’s almost time for the United States to do its annual time warp again.

That’s right — Daylight Saving Time (often mistakenly called Daylight Savings Time) is coming to an end this weekend. At 2 a.m. local time on Nov. 5, most Americans will set their clocks back one hour, making it 1 a.m. in their local time.

This change, commonly referred to as “fall back,” will give those adjusting their clocks an extra hour of sleep. And while many Americans enjoy this extra hour of sleep provided by Daylight Saving Time, the ritual has not always been accepted.

In fact, Daylight Saving Time has a long, and at-times controversial, history.

You may have heard that Benjamin Franklin invented Daylight Saving Time. Though the Founding Father did propose the idea of changing clocks to follow the sun in different seasons, he may have been joking, according to National Geographic, and the official clock-changing policy wasn’t adopted in the U.S. until centuries later.

Germany was the first country to officially implement a Daylight Saving Time policy, which it put into effect in 1916 to save energy during World War I. In the United States, 1918 was the first year an official clock-changing law went into effect.

But this was just the beginning of America’s journey with Daylight Saving Time. After a number of times going back and forth over whether to apply the time change nationally, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 brought standardization to the dates for turning clocks forward and back.

Since then, the dates marking the beginning and end of Daylight Saving Time have changed multiple times, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. The current policy, which says Daylight Saving Time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, began in 2007. That means Americans sprang their clocks forward on March 12 this year.

And while most of the U.S. does observe Daylight Saving Time, there are still some states and cities that do not change their clocks with the rest of the country including Arizona and Hawaii.

Write to Abigail Abrams at abigail.abrams@time.com.