May 20, 1873: Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patent copper rivets on denim work pants. Eventually, Strauss will start dying them blue. Some time later, blue jeans will become known as "Levi's," just as tissues became "Kleenex" and cola became "Coke."
Löb Strauß was born on February 26, 1829 in Buttenheim, in what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria, now part of the State of Bavaria in Germany. In 1847, aged 18, Strauss travelled with his mother and 2 sisters to New York, to join his brothers Jonas and Louis, who had begun a wholesale dry goods business. He worked as an itinerant peddler of goods from his brother's store: Kettles, blankets and sewing goods.
The family decided to open a West Coast branch of their dry goods business in San Francisco, which was the commercial hub of the California Gold Rush. Levi was chosen to represent them, and he took steamships for San Francisco via Panama, where he arrived in early March 1854 and joined his sister Fanny's family. As the family was Jewish, he helped establish the 1st synagogue in San Francisco, Congregation Emanu-El.
Under the name Levi Strauss & Co., he sold clothing, bedding, combs, purses and handkerchiefs, while making tents, and also using the canvas for tents to make work pants, later called jeans. Jacob W. Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada, was one of his customers. In 1871, having invented a way to strengthen work pants using rivets, he went into business with Strauss to mass-produce them. The next year, Davis asked Strauss to help him apply for a patent, and the patent, one-half assigned to Levi Strauss & Co., was issued in 1873.
In 1890, the rivet patent went into the public domain. The same year, lot numbers were assigned to company products, and "501" was used to designate the famous copper-riveted waist overalls. The company lost its records in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, and there is no information why that number was chosen. But, by that point, the copper-riveted overalls, with "L. S. & CO. S. F." engraved on the rivets, had already become an American legend.
Strauss died on September 26, 1902, at the age of 73. His estate was worth about $30 million -- over $1 billion in 2022 money. He never married, and is not known to have had any children. His nephew Sigmund Stern's only child, Elise Fanny Stern, married Walter A. Haas, the son of another Bavarian-Jewish-American businessman, Abraham Haas. Their descendants are the current owners of Levi Strauss & Co.
Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s, but sales were largely confined to the working people of the Western U.S., such as cowboys, lumberjacks, and railroad workers. Levi's jeans were first introduced to the East during the dude ranch craze of the 1930s, when vacationing Easterners returned home with tales of the hard-wearing riveted denim pants. Another boost came in World War II, when blue jeans were declared an essential commodity, and sold only to people engaged in defense work.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Levi's jeans became popular among a wide range of youth subcultures, including greasers, mods, rockers and hippies. Levi's popular shrink-to-fit "501s" were sold as labeled, sized as manufactured, and had substantial shrinkage upon laundering.
Walter Haas' son, Walter A. Haas Jr., owned baseball's Oakland Athletics from 1980 until his death in 1995, after which his estate sold the team. In 2014, the NFL's San Francisco 49ers moved to a new stadium in suburban Santa Clara, California. Levi Strauss & Co. bought the naming rights, and it has been Levi's Stadium ever since, nicknamed "The Field of Jeans."
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May 20, 1873 was a Tuesday. The only professional sports league in America at the time was baseball's National Association, and only one game in it was played that day. The Philadelphia White Stockings beat the Elizabeth Resolutes, 6-3. The "Whites" folded with the NA after the 1875 season, and no current team bears any connection to them.
The Resolutes should have been so lucky. The 1st sports team in New Jersey that could be called "major league" -- baseball historians are divided on whether the NA should be so considered -- they had been founded in 1869, joined the NA this season, and were left with a record of 0-3 by this game. They finished 2-21, including 0-7 at home, and folded. They played at the Waverly Fairgrounds, now part of Weequahic Park in Newark.
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