The Blues Are Born

The Blues Are Born
In March 1853, the youngest member of the firm of J. Strauss Brother & Co. of New York City stepped off a steamship and onto one of San Francisco’s many wharves.

He was one of the city’s newest entrepreneurs, the proprietor of the West Coast branch of the family business, but he gave this new enterprise his own name: Levi Straus.

Born in Bavaria in 1829, Levi immigrated to New York with his mother and sisters around 1847.

Brothers Louis and Jonas had a dry goods wholesaling business there and Levi joined the family firm. By the early 1850, the Gold Rush had turned San Francisco into a humming metropolis, and Levi was sent to California to represent J. Strauss Brother & Co. on the West Coast.

His first wholesale warehouse was on the north side of California Street between Sansome and Battery Streets.

On May 1853, the clipper ship Oriental arrived in the city form New York with his first shipment of dry goods and six more ships arrived with merchandise for Levi before the year ended. The firm of “Levi Strauss” soon had retail customers throughout the West.

He did not build his business alone. Around 1856, his sister Fanny her husband David Stern and their son Jacob arrived in San Francisco from New York, and brother Louis joined the firm a year later.

Levi moved his warehouse to a succession of larger quarters and by 1864, he was living with Fanny and David’s growing family.

In 1866, the company moved to spacious headquarters at 14-16 Battery Street, and the corporate name was now “Levi Strauss & Co.”

In January, the wife of a local laborer asked Jacob, a tailor to make a pair of sturdy pants for her husband. Using a heavy white fabric called cotton duck Jacob fashioned the trousers as usual.

He wanted to make the pants last longer, so he used a few metal rivets to fasten the pockets and presented the finished product to his customer, who paid him $3.

Within a few moths, Jacob was making so many pairs he decided to patent the process and look for a business partner to help him mass produce the pants.

Enter Levi Strauss, his fabric supplier, Jacob wrote to Levi sometime in 1872, and in July of that year the two men applied for a patent on the new invention.

Their correspondence was lost in 1906, so it is not known what kind of agreement they forged, but what is known is the important thing: on May 20, 1873, the US patent and Trademark Office granted Levi Strauss & Co. and Jacob Davis patent No. 139, 121 for an “Improvement in Fastening Pocket Opening” on men’s work pants: the first blue jeans.
The Blues Are Born

Early History of BMW

Early History of BMW
BMW formally recognizes its birthday as March 7, 1916 the day Gustav Otto’s fledgling aircraft company morphed into a new company just as he handed off ownership to others.

That perhaps sounds like an inauspicious beginning but Otto is nevertheless considered a reluctant father of the company know today as BMW.

That is because the Bavarian Aircraft Works would not have spawned the eventual BMW aircraft company, which in turn led to the auto company, without Otto’s mechanical genius, love of flying family pride, and dedication to building some of the most sought after aircraft engines of the time.

Otto’s father, Nikolaus August Otto who died in 1891, invented the “Otto” combustion engine which first viable internal combustion engine featuring the correct timing of ignition and combustion.

Starting up about the same time as the Otto aircraft firm, the Karl Rapp Motorwerke in 1913 began producing aircraft engines that could win altitude and speed competitions and therefore military contracts.

As the dogs of war began howling in 1914, Rapp had precious production capacity and quickly won contracts from Prussia and Austro-Hungary to produce 25 large V12 aircraft engines.

Rapp’s company began buying four cylinder water cooled aircraft engines from the Gustav Otto company whose operations it absorbed.

By 1916, Rapp Motor Works was employing 370 people and more than 100 machine tools.

An Austrian engineer, Franz Josef Popp largely directed Rapp’s business affairs including securing the all important military contracts.

Popp arrived at Rapp at the direction of the Imperial Austro-Hungary War Ministry to oversee production of 10 million Reichsmarks worth of airplane engines.

On the strength of this new business, Popp transformed the Rapp company into Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH.

In 1917, BMW brought a new product to market that would boost its aircraft reputation, the Type IIIa, water cooled, six cylinder designed by chief engineer Max Friz – a grand engineering mind who would dominate BMW’s product development culture on into the 1960s.

In 1921, Friz developed a motorcycle engine that turn out to be one of the great engines of the decade. It was sold as the Bayern Kleinmotor (Bavarian Small Engine).

An improved Kleinmotor would next power the first motorcycle sold under BMW’s own brand.
Early History of BMW