You can thank the rain in Seattle for helping to make San Leandro-based JanSport a household name when it comes to backpacks. In 1967, when the company first started selling compact backpacks ...

Murray McCory revolutionized school life with a lightweight backpack that he created through JanSport, the outdoors equipment company he founded in 1967. By the mid-1980s, JanSport bags were ...

The design and materials represented a major advance beyond the old woodframe and canvas backpacks of the post-World War II era. ... Forgotten Seattle origins of the JanSport school backpack.

Visit any American bus stop and you’ll see both L.L. Bean and JanSport backpacks. As of 2010, even Massachusetts Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren still had an old school L.L. Bean bag.

While the idea of strapping gear to your back is older than we can say, the modern student backpack is quite young—only about 44 years old ...