And there is the question of what to do with the extra hour. Some people maintain that it takes almost an hour to actually change the time on all the watches, clocks and electronic devices in their home! And not forgetting the timer on your VCR or the clock in your car, and the “time-stamp” message that’s recorded on your telephone answering machine. Fortunately, the time displayed on your home computer is usually programmed to change automatically twice a year.
What about the hour you lose, when the clocks go forward? As the English writer, Richard Whately put it – “Lose an hour in the morning and you will spend all day looking for it.” Officially, the time changes at 2 am on the day in question – the time being chosen as the one that would cause least disruption. Most people adjust their clocks sometime the day before, in order not to forget to do it, and most of us of course are asleep at 2 am anyway. It has been suggested many times that when we change the clocks, we should also change the batteries in our smoke detectors – an estimated 30% of homes in the United States have missing or worn out batteries.