1. Daylight Saving Time was created mainly to please farmers, who needed more daylight hours during the summer to finish their chores.

False. Farmers have almost universally opposed Daylight Saving Time. Its main proponents have historically been retail merchants, international financial traders, and industrialists. During World War I and World War II, Daylight Saving Time was temporarily adopted as a measure to conserve fuel and to increase industrial output. The first national scheme to implement Daylight Saving Time went into effect in 1917.

2. The adoption of Daylight Saving Time has been definitively shown to save the country fuel and energy.

False. The claim has often been made, but energy usage has been notoriously difficult to quantify. Savings in electrical energy during one part of the day, for example, can be offset by increased gasoline consumption, or increased use of coal or fuel oil at other times of day.

3. The move to create standard time zones across the U.S. was stimulated mostly by railroad companies, who needed to standardize their train schedules.

True. The simplification of long-distance transportation schedules was the driving force behind the establishment of standard time zones in the 19th century. The Railway General Time Convention of 1883 set standard time zones nationally.

4. The United States contains four time zones.

False. The U.S. crosses eight time zones: Atlantic (Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Yukon, Alaska-Hawaii, and Bering.

5. The Department of Transportation currently has responsibility for setting time zone boundaries in the U.S.

True. Previously, the responsibility for setting time zone boundaries lay with the Interstate Commerce Commission.