A sure sign that spring is on the horizon: It’s time to set the clocks forward for daylight saving time.

Most Americans will set their clocks 60 minutes later before heading to bed Saturday night, but daylight saving time officially starts Sunday at 2 a.m. local time.

You lose an hour of sleep, but daylight saving time arrives with the promise of many months ahead with an extra hour of evening light.

Americans perform this ritual twice a year because of a suggestion made by Benjamin Franklin back in the year 1784. It was first enacted by the federal government in 1918 to save coal during World War One. The on-and-off again practice of setting timepieces forward in the spring and backward in the fall was finally standardized and signed into law in 1966. The idea is to make better use of daylight and to conserve energy.

It’s also a good time to put new batteries in warning devices such as smoke detectors and hazard warning radios.

The time change is not observed by Hawaii, most of Arizona, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas.

Daylight saving time will end when we fall back on November 5th.

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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash