In 2005, the U.S. enacted the Energy Policy Act which changed the date we “Spring Forward” from the first weekend of April to the first weekend of March effective this year. So one month ago, we shifted forward by an hour to help save energy (with minimal success).
Many of our household devices are designed to make this change for us, shifting forward in the spring and backwards in the fall, so that we don’t have to worry about it. While some devices, like computers, can automatically patch themselves, others like digital watches are hard-coded into their firmware.
So when March 11 came along, we found those devices that did not change themselves automatically, and made the change manually. Well guess what? Those devices are about to shift forward again this weekend! Don’t get caught looking at one of these clocks, or you’ll rip yourself off of an extra hour of sleep!
And yes, we will go through this again in the fall, but the date will only move by one week this time.
