Levi Strauss, a businessman working in San Francisco, and Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, received a patent for "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings" on this day in 1873. With it, they began selling "waist overalls," now known around the world as jeans—specifically, the Levi's 501 jeans. As implied by the patent's name, the real innovation of the new work pants was using rivets to reinforce their structure.
Davis, who hailed from Latvia, was the brains behind jeans. He wrote to Strauss (who himself was from Bavaria) in 1872 about patenting work pants with metal rivets on various stress points to add durability. He didn't have the money to apply for a patent on his own, so he asked Strauss to pay the costs in exchange for sharing the patent.
The first set of jeans were called "waist overalls" and were produced out of individual homes, though Strauss eventually moved production to a factory. They were a hit instantly, and by the 1920s, Levi's jeans were the best-selling work pants out there.
Levi Strauss & Co. have a timeline of the changes to 501 jeans made over the decades here.
