Entrepreneur. He was a Russian-Jewish tailor, who immigrated to the United States, and becoming the inventor of the riveted work pants, now commonly known as denim blue jeans or Levi's. His birth surname was Youphes, but he and his siblings took the surname of Davis. JW, as he referred to himself and was commonly known, was born in the Russian Empire in an unknown town on the river Dwina outside what is now known as Riga, Latvia. Upon his arrival in the United States, he worked his trade from New York and Maine to San Francisco and Weaverville between 1854 and 1858, before heading into the Canadian wilderness to sell general merchandise to miners from 1858 to 1865. He worked twice in the brewery business, Canada from 1865 to 1866 and Reno in 1868; ventured into the coal business in San Francisco in 1867; and worked for his brother-in-law in the cigar business in Virginia City in 1867, before resuming tailoring in Virginia City from 1867 to 1868. Arriving in Reno in May of 1868 , he returned to tailoring in 1869. In late 1870, he was asked by a customer to make a pair of strong pants for her husband to wear while chopping wood. As he was making the pants in January of 1871, he hit upon the idea of reinforcing the weak points at the seams and pockets with metal rivets, which he normally used for horse blanket straps. With the strong sales of these work pants, in July of 1872, he wrote Levi Strauss & Company offering half of the patent rights in exchange for the company covering the patent application fee. In that letter, he also wrote, "If the patent is granted, I am willing to go either to San Francisco or New York to manufacture or represent a factory."Levi Strauss accepted his offer, and in April of 1873, the Davis family moved to San Francisco where Davis assumed a foreman's position to oversee the manufacturing of riveted work pants. The patent for "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings" was granted on May 20, 1873 to Jacob W. Davis, of Reno, Nevada, and Levi Strauss & Company, of San Francisco, California. His 501 brand jeans was soon a bestseller, and the company grew quickly and eventually becoming famous world-wide. He resided in San Francisco for the remainder of his life. His son, Simon, eventually was managing the Levi Strauss Company, rebuilding the company after the 1906 earthquake and designing coveralls.