While disputed, many historians argue that the first proposal to move clocks forward in the spring and backward in the fall came from George Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand who wanted to implement 2-hour time changes so that he could have more daytime to spend collecting insects. Hudson’s pitch never came to fruition in America until March of 1918 when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Standard Time Act, commonly referred to as the “Calder Act,” into law, legislation that officially set five time zones in the United States and introduced Daylight Saving Time. The latter was instituted as a means of conserving energy to help the war effort in Europe, allowing workers to spend more time working during the daytime and, in turn, using less energy to keep lights on.
In 1919, following the conclusion of the first World War, Daylight Saving Time was repealed, quickly re-established for the same purpose when the United States entered World War II in 1942, and repealed once more following the conflict in 1945. It was not until 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act into law that Daylight Saving Time became a permanent fixture in the United States. The law did not require each state to adopt the practice, but provided that the practice must be statewide and occur at the same time as other states.
Today, all states besides Arizona and Hawaii observe Daylight Saving Time. However, in recent years, debates regarding whether or not the practice should remain in place have been circling at both the state and federal levels. In Congress, the aptly named “Sunshine Protection Act” has been proposed on multiple occasions, passing the U.S. Senate in 2022, but has never made its way into law, at least for now. Here in Illinois, similar discussions are taking place regarding the elimination of biannual time changes. Legislators have filed a number of bills in recent General Assemblies that mirror the Sunshine Protection Act, though no bills of such sort have made it to the governor’s desk.
As discussions continue, you can voice your thoughts on whether or not Illinois should do away with Daylight Saving Time by taking Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie’s survey here