Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans 1873
On this day in 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and
Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work
pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the
world’s most famous garments: blue jeans.
Born Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829, the young Strauss
immigrated to New York with his family in 1847 after the death of his
father. By 1850, Loeb had changed his name to Levi and was working in
the family dry goods business, J. Strauss Brother & Co. In early
1853, Levi Strauss went west to seek his fortune during the heady days
of the Gold Rush.
In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business
under his own name and worked as the West Coast representative of his
family’s firm. His new business imported clothing, fabric and other dry
goods to sell in the small stores opening all over California and other
Western states to supply the rapidly expanding communities of gold
miners and other settlers. By 1866, Strauss had moved his company to
expanded headquarters and was a well-known businessman and supporter of
the Jewish community in San Francisco.
Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss’
regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter to Strauss about his
method of making work pants with metal rivets on the stress points–at
the corners of the pockets and the base of the button fly–to make them
stronger. As Davis didn’t have the money for the necessary paperwork, he
suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the
patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, and the patent for
“Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings”–the innovation that would
produce blue jeans as we know them–was granted to both men on May 20,
1873.
Strauss brought Davis to San Francisco to oversee the first
manufacturing facility for “waist overalls,” as the original jeans were
known. At first they employed seamstresses working out of their homes,
but by the 1880s, Strauss had opened his own factory. The famous
501brand jean–known until 1890 as “XX”–was soon a bestseller, and the
company grew quickly. By the 1920s, Levi’s denim waist overalls were the
top-selling men’s work pant in the United States. As decades passed,
the craze only grew, and now blue jeans are worn by men and women, young
and old, around the world.
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Civil War
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Cold War
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Crime
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Disaster
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General Interest
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- 1506 Christopher Columbus dies
- 1862 The Homestead Act
- 1927 Spirit of St. Louis departs
- 1969 Battle for Hamburger Hill ends
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Hollywood
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Literary
- 1946 W.H. Auden becomes a U.S. citizen
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Music
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Old West
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Presidential
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Sports
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Vietnam War
- 1953 French see “light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam
- 1969 Kennedy criticizes the “Hamburger Hill” battle
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World War I
- 1915 British renew attacks in Battle of Festubert
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World War II
- 1940 Germans break through to English Channel at Abbeville, France
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