BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — It’s that time of year again: time to change the time! Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, which means you’ll need to set your clock back an hour before going to bed on Saturday night.

The question is: why do we perform this ritual every year? This is the question I will answer.

The idea of ​​daylight saving time was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin while serving as American delegate to Paris in 1784, in an essay. Standard time, to which we return on Sunday, was instituted in the United States and Canada by the railroad system in 1883. It was not until the Standard Time Act of 1918 that the clocks changed twice a day. an has become the law of landing. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 standardized the start and end dates of DST in the United States, allowed local exemptions, and remained, with some modifications, the reason the clock changes two times a year.

Recently, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 would have made DST the new permanent standard time, but it was never passed by Congress. If this law had been passed and signed into law, it would have had a major impact on much of the United States regarding the time our last sunrise would occur in the winter.

By moving the clocks back an hour in the fall, we gain an hour of daylight in the morning, which can help us make better use of available daylight during normal waking hours.

So the next time you hate how the days are getting shorter this time of year, remember that it could still be mostly dark just before 9 a.m. in Buffalo if we didn’t wind the clock back in November.