Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans

May 20, 1873

ON this day, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets. It was the birth of the world's most famous garment — the blue jeans.

Levi Strauss was well-known for his business in imported clothing, fabric and other dry goods and Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss' regular customers. In 1872, he presented to Strauss 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. Davis didn't have the money for the necessary paperwork, therefore, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together.

Strauss agreed, 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.

The Wright Brothers patented their flying machine

May 22, 1906

ORVILLE Wright and Wilbur Wright had requested a patent application for a "flying machine", nine months before their first successful flight. The Wright Brothers' would take photographs of every prototype and test of their various flying machines, they had requested a nearby person to take photograph of Orville Wright in full flight.

The craft soared to an altitude of 10 feet, travelled 120 feet, and landed 12 seconds after takeoff. After making two longer flights that day, Orville and Wilbur Wright sent a telegram to their father, instructing him to inform the press that manned flight had taken place. This marked the birth of the first real airplane.

Java development begins

May 23, 1994

SUN Microsystems Inc. formally announced its new programmes, Java and HotJava, at the SunWorld '95 convention. Java was described as a programming language that, combined with the HotJava World Wide Web browser, offered the best universal operating system to the online community. The concept behind the programs was to design a programming language whose applications would be available to a user with any kind of operating system, eliminating the problems of translation between Macintoshes, IBM-compatible computers, and Unix machines.