Daylight saving ends Sunday

(UPI) -- Most Americans will have to change their clocks Sunday as daylight saving time (DST) will end with a "fall back" to standard time.

The change will take place on November 3 at 2 a.m.

The federal government doesn't require U.S. states to operate by daylight saving time. In fact residents of Arizona (except those living in the Navajo Indian Reservation), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands won't need to adjust their clocks as they never sprung forward when DST began on Sunday, March 10.

Common lore credits Benjamin Franklin with conceiving of daylight savings, based on a satirical letter he penned while serving as ambassador to France, which suggested taxes on candles on shutters to force people to rise with sun.

But modern daylight saving time wasn't formally proposed as a two-hour shift until 1895, after the industrial revolution and modern shift work added relevance.

Daylight saving didn't come about in the U.S. until 1918, when the government standardized the yearly start and end of daylight saving time for the states who chose to have it.

Later during World War II DST became mandatory for the whole country in order to save wartime resources. From February 9, 1942, to September 30, 1945 DST was observed year round.

Since then, DST has been optional for U.S. states.

While some studies have suggested that daylight saving doesn't actually save energy, and might even results in a net loss, others do show energy gains.

"If people get home an hour earlier in a warmer house, they turn on their air conditioning," the University of Washington's Environmental economist Hendrik Wolff said in 2011.

Other side effects of DST include an increase in outdoorsy activities.

"At the time of daylight saving time extension in the spring, television watching is substantially reduced and outdoor behaviors like jogging, walking, or going to the park are substantially increased," Wolff said. "That's remarkable, because of course the total amount of daylight in a given day is the same."