Congress Approves Daylight-Saving Time

Posted on | March 19, 2010 | No Comments

On this date 92 years ago, Congress approved Daylight-Saving Time. Daylight-saving time is the idea of moving the clocks ahead an hour to increase the overall daylight in a day. According to Wikipedia:

The practice is controversial. Adding daylight to afternoons benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours, but causes problems for farming, evening entertainment and other occupations tied to the sun. Traffic fatalities are reduced when there is extra afternoon daylight. Its effect on health and crime is less clear. Although an early goal of DST was to reduce evening usage of incandescent lighting, formerly a primary use of electricity, modern heating and cooling usage patterns differ greatly, and research about how DST currently affects energy use is limited or contradictory.

And below are a few primary sources I found on the Library of Congress while searching for daylight-saving time.

A primary source document:

Some current legislation regarding DST:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:H.R.5530:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:H.R.4015:

Here is a list of DST dates for the next few years, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

As you can see, sometimes it can be difficult to find primary sources if your topic is very specific as is the case here.  But it is possible to find a few things that might be able to liven up a lesson you may be teaching.

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