INVENTOR of the MONTH

Jan Ernst Matzeliger: Making Shoes Faster

Jan Ernst Matzeliger was born September 15, 1852, in Paramaribo, Surinem. His mother was a native of Surinem and his father was a wealthy Dutch engineer. At the age of 19, Matzeliger took a job on an East Indian merchant ship. It docked in Philadelphia and he chose to stay in the United States. In 1877 he moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, where he became a shoe machine mechanic. While at work he noticed that lasting – the process of connecting the shoe upper to the shoe sole - was a slow hand-done process. A laster could make only 50 pairs of shoes a day. Matzeliger believed he could create a machine that was more efficient.

Opposition from the laster union made it necessary for him to work in secret at night. At first he experimented with scraps of wood, wire, nails, and cigar boxes. His second model was made of scrap metal and parts from other machines. He was offered $1,500 for the rights to the part that turned the leather around the toe of the shoe. Matzeliger refused.

When he found some investors, he was able to build an improved third model. In March 1883 he was awarded a patent. On May 29 of that year, a factory test was conducted and his machine produced 75 pairs of women’s shoes perfectly. In actual production, it could produce 150 to 700 pairs of shoes daily. The cost of producing shoes was cut in half. Unfortunately, Matzeliger did not live long enough to benefit financially from his creation. He died on August 24, 1889, at the age of thirty-seven.

View Archive