Jacob Davis, in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss’s regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter in cursive longhand, barely legible, that Strauss had to read four times, a legend that, while historically was never authenticated, to Strauss about his methodology 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. Though Davis did not have any money for the necessary various paperwork filing fees, he proposed that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, likely because Davis had made Strauss ten suits, from silk Strauss had smuggled into San Francisco, and the patent for “Improvement in Fastening Pocket Openings,” an innovation
