Daylight Saving Time: Your Trip to Hawaii + Benjamin Franklin + 6AM Calls.

It was obvious that Daylight Saving Time started today when Rob’s phone began ringing at 6AM with mainland friends wishing Rob a Happy Birthday. We don’t observe DST in Hawaii, so that makes the islands an extra hour earlier now. Why? Read on and also find out what Benjamin Franklin had to do with this.

Hawaii gave DST a try back in 1933 for three short weeks. No one even seems to know why we ever tried it. It was in effect once again during World War II, when it was called Hawaiian War Time. Hawaii officially opted out of the Uniform Time Act in 1967.

With our tropical location, daylight savings isn’t necessary. We’re closer to the equator than the mainland, so there’s less of a difference in the amount of daylight between seasons.

When you’re visiting or calling Hawaii from now until November 6, Hawaii will be three hours earlier than the west coast. As a Kauai friend posted on Facebook today, “Living in Hawaii, Daylight Saving Time makes you feel another 1,000 miles away from mainland friends.”

(How do you like this Hawaii time watch? It was purchased at ABC Stores many years ago).

History of Daylight Saving Time

Often mistakenly called “daylight savings time,” this practice was created to make daylight extend further into summer evenings while creating darker mornings. Benjamin Franklin first proposed it in the 1700s in an essay he wrote. The first national implementation, however, was in Germany in 1916.

Daylight Saving Time Today

It remains a wide-scale global practice to this day, albeit under different names like Summer Time. About half of the world still observes this annual shift in time. It remains somewhat confusing, with our needing to remember those places that practice it and others that do not. Most of the U.S. observes DST, except Hawaii and Arizona (although the Navajo tribal lands do), plus Guam, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.

The one thing we can all agree on, when DST begins on the mainland, we know that spring and summer are soon to arrive with it longer days and tropical nights here in the islands. Will you be joining us on a Hawaii vacation soon?