Daylight-saving time a good idea - in 1784.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

Blame Ben Franklin.

After all, if the early morning light hadn't awoken him during a sojourn to Paris in 1784, we might not be in this "spring-forward" fix called daylight-saving time.

Great idea, Ben. Thanks a lot. Of course, we love it when we "fall back" the last Sunday in October.

Daylight-saving time hasn't been around forever, but it's been around long enough - officially since 1918 in the United States - to create a host of amusing situations and anecdotes from here to Eastern Oregon, from there to the Middle East.

"It's kind of a running joke," says Scott Trainor, city manager in Ontario, which observes daylight-saving time but is part of a small chunk of Oregon that is on Mountain Standard Time. Therefore, Ontario and all of Malheur County are always one hour ahead of the rest of Oregon.

Tell that to the ODOT guys.

Some of the state's transportation department employees, and officials from other state departments or cities who occasionally drive to Ontario from Salem or other places outside Malheur county, forget about the time difference, Trainor says.

"I can't tell you how many times they've been an hour late," Trainor says. It happens about 80 percent of the time, he says. "It can be kind of a minor annoyance."

And some folks, who live about 25 miles north of Ontario in the Baker County city of Huntington, but who work in Ontario, just keep their clocks on MST, Trainor says. It's easier that way. Unless you forget when checking the TV listings.

Although Franklin came up with the idea 221 years ago as a way for late-partying Parisians to conserve on candle wax (and thus spend less on candles) - and also avoid the blinding morning light - the rest of the world didn't get with daylight-saving time until the Germans decided to set their clocks back an hour to conserve fuel during World War I. When Congress made it federal law in the United States in 1918, there was such a backlash that the law was repealed a year later, allowing states and local governments to decide for themselves. In fact, the rebellious states of Arizona, Indiana and Hawaii still stay on standard time year-round.

Through the years, though, that caused a lot of confusion and drove the broadcasting industry wacko, as well as airlines, railways and bus companies. Passengers on a 35-mile bus route from Ohio to West Virginia had to change their watches seven times to have the correct time, according to the Web site, webexhibits.org.

In 1965, the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota were actually an hour apart.

In Eugene in 1961, the University of Oregon stayed on standard time but moved its hours of operation up an hour during the last week in April. Not all of the rest of the city followed suit, however. Things were so confusing that The Register-Guard even printed both standard and daylight-saving time for meeting notices and news stories that year.

In 1962, Oregon voters finally approved the annual shift to daylight-saving time, standardizing the state.

It wasn't until 1966 that president Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act, standardizing the entire nation, exempting those states whose legislatures voted to keep standard time.

Today, more than 70 nations worldwide use daylight-saving time. But the annual "springing forward" and "falling back" continues to cause problems around the globe, whether it's college students rioting by throwing beer bottles at police when the bar closes an hour early or Arab-Israeli terrorists blowing themselves up - instead of busloads of intended victims in 1999 - by not realizing the time change in the bombs prepared and given to them by West Bank Palestinians.

And, of course, the fight goes on in Ontario, where state Rep. Tom Butler pushed for passage of a bill in 2001 that would have allowed Malheur County to ignore daylight-saving time on the first Sunday of every April. Just like the laws for some southeastern Indiana counties near the cities of Cincinnati and Louisville, Ky., it would have kept Malheur County in synch with the rest of Oregon six months out of the year. Not that Butler cares about that. He and some of his constituents just think daylight-saving time is hogwash. And they find it annoying having to "moove" their clocks ahead.

"I had a farmer tell me that it was really messing up his cows," Butler says. "They don't understand it."