We're celebrating a stroke of in'jean'ious in the history of invention this week. On May 20, 1873, U.S. patent no.139,121 was issued to Jacob W. Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada. The patent gave Davis and his business partner, Levi Strauss, a fabric supplier from California who paid Davis's patent filing fees, exclusive rights to a rivet process for reinforcing and strengthening the pocket openings of pants.
That same year, Davis and Strauss opened two factories in San Francisco where, for two decades, Levi Strauss & Co. were the first and only company producing riveted clothing in the United States. Strauss and Davis were glad to have filed the patent; their design proved popular and it wasn't long before they found themselves filing lawsuits against competitors for patent infringement. When their patent rights expired on May 5, 1890, rivets on work pants quickly became a default design feature for clothing manufacturers.
Over a century later, Davis's contribution to fashion history has stood the test of time. This January/February 1978 issue of DuPont Magazine featured a brief study on the careers of Davis and Strauss alongside the company's own contribution to denimwear; synthetic Dacron fiber.
Hagley Library's holdings of the publication, all of which are available in our Digital Archives, run from its first issue, published on June, 1913 to 2003. E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. published the magazine to provide publicity for its product lines, and the collection documents the company's growth during the 20th century from its historical roots as a manufacturer of gunpowder and other explosives to a multinational corporation with business interests in a wide array of chemical products, plastics, synthetic fibers and textiles, pharmaceuticals, paints, as well as other industrial and consumer product materials.
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