The tiny pockets on jeans and some other pants were designed for pocket watches. They were first used with the original Levi’s “waist overalls” jeans in 1890. People don’t use pocket watches anymore, but the pockets are still around. Ever notice those little pockets on your jeans? They’re pretty much too small to be useless. But in ye olden times, it had an important purpose: The pocket held a pocket watch. The ubiquity of the pockets can be traced back to the design for “waist overalls,” the original name for the blue jeans made by Levi Strauss & Co. They appear on the design in the patent Strauss and J.W. Davis received for “Improvement in Fastening Pocket Openings,” way back on May 20, 1873, and were first put into mass use in 1890 with the “Lot 501” jeans, the model for Levis 501 jeans today. “The watch pocket was a feature of our first waist overalls,” Tracey Panek, the in-house historian at Levi Strauss & Co., said in an email. “The oldest pair of waist overalls in the...