I was curious about the whole concept of daylight savings time, so I checked howstuffworks.com to get the low down:

During World War I, many countries started adjusting their clocks during part of the year. The idea was to try to adjust daylight hours in the summer to more closely match the hours that people are awake. During World War I, the goal was to conserve fuel by lowering the need for artificial light.

We have continued it’s use in a couple different formats and this year marks the beginning of a new schedule for the start and stop dates as an effect of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Gives new meaning to the phrase “Time is money”.