Back in 1784, hanging out in Paris and heady with Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin had an idea.

Struck by the fact that Parisians were sleeping during sunlight hours and then staying up late at night by candlelight, he calculated the number of candles that were being wasted — and came up with a very impressive number, 64 million pounds worth of them. Franklin therefore jokingly proposed a massive schedule change, noting that a fortune could be saved through “the economy of using sunshine instead of candles,” and even suggested at one point that perhaps cannons be fired at sunrise to get everybody out of bed.

Such was the germ of the idea that would eventually lead to Daylight Saving Time — that if we patterned our lives to rise and set with the sun itself, we’d save energy and money. Flash forward 230 years later, and this remains the basic reason why many of us will wake up this coming Sunday and realize that it’s brighter outside than we’re used to.

Read more at washingtonpost.com

FILE – Custodian Ray Keen checks the time on a clock face after changing the time on the 97-year-old clock atop the Clay County Courthouse, in this Nov. 6, 2010 file photo taken in Clay Center, Kan. Most Americans will be able to get an extra hour of sleep Sunday Nov. 2, 2014 thanks to the annual shift back to standard time. Officially, the change occurs at 2 a.m. Sunday, but most people will set their clocks back before hitting the sack Saturday night. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

Charlie Riedel