Daylight Saving Time will be ending in the early hours of Sunday, Nov. 1.
It's time to set your clocks back and replace the batteries in your smoke detectors.
The daylight savings idea goes back to ancient times when civilizations adjusted their daily schedules to fit the sun's schedule.
In 1784, Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay to the editor of The Journal of Paris where he jokingly suggested that Parisians could save on candle usage by getting out of bed earlier in the morning and making use of the natural morning light.
It took World War I to push DST into practice. The Germans were first, adopting a light-extending system as a fuel saving measure in 1916.
The British switched one year later.
The United States adopted "fast time" in 1918, when Congress passed the Standard Time Act, which established time zones. The experiment in seasonal time change didn't last after the war ended. Its repeal has been blamed on opposition from dairy farmers, whose cows didn't understand - or care - about clock settings.
A few cities, including Pittsburgh, Boston and New York, chose to stay with DST.
World War II brought the time change back to the entire country. Year-round "War Time" was implemented in the U.S. 40 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Britain used "Double Summer Time," which involved setting clocks two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in summer and one hour ahead of GMT in winter.
In the United States, DST caused widespread confusion for trains, buses and the broadcasting industry from 1945 to 1966 because states and localities were free to choose if and when they would observe the time change.
Congress finally settled things by passing the Uniform Time Act of 1966, setting beginning and ending dates for DST. States could still opt out of DST by passing a local ordinance.
In 1974 and 1975, DST was extended in hopes of saving energy following the 1973 oil embargo. While there was a savings, it had to be balanced against the safety of children going to school on dark winter mornings.
But Congress wasn't quite finished.
In 2005, after heavy lobbying by the National Association of Convenience Stores, the Energy Policy Act was passed and DST went from seven months to eight.
Why would convenience stores care when Daylight Saving Time ended? They wanted Halloween to fall during DST.
These days, DST starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November in the United States - except in Hawaii, most of Arizona, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Guam, where they don't observe DST.
Internationally, some form of Daylight Saving Time is used in over 70 countries around the world.
Does it really save energy dollars is a debated question.
Regardless of the research, don't expect DST to go away any time soon. Americans have become too attached to the extra hours of sunlight in the evenings.
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