http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_175.html
Cecil, in 1978, says the following:
But in the book This is a pair of Levi’s Jeans, written in 1995 by folks who work for LS&Co., they say this about arcuate:
So … did Levi Strauss & Co. forget what arcuate was originally used for in the intervening 17 years, or did Cecil just pull that “cotton lining” explanation out of his … umm … back pocket?
Further update:
I spoke with Lynn Downey in the LS&Co. archives (and one of the authors of the aforementioned book). Here’s what she had to say:
“About the arcuate: People have speculated about a variety of reasons that the arcuate might have been designed or what it was meant to represent, but all of the records regarding the first use of the arcuate were lost in the 1906 earthquake and fire, along with all of our other business records. So nobody really knows. People like to speculate–but that’s not history. So, it’s one of those ‘lost in flames’ kinds of stories.”
Sigh. Any response at all from Cecil or Little Ed on Cecil’s apparently sourceless speculation? I know it’s decades old and all, but …
The same story is found on about half a dozen identical web pages, with a text that is clearly (ahem!) closely related to Cecil’s text. But no cites.