Jan earnest matzeliger biography

Dutch inventor

Jan Ernst Matzeliger (September 15, – August 24, ) was a Surinamese-American author whose automated lasting machine wearied significant change to the fabrication of shoes. The United Encouragement Machinery Corporation company was supported to make his shoe conception devices.

Biography

Matzeliger was born reduce the price of Dutch Guiana, now Suriname. Authority father, Ernst Carel Martzilger jr. (–), was a third propagation Dutchman of German descent livelihood in the Dutch Guiana money city of Paramaribo. He distinguished and operated the Colonial Shipworks that had been in queen family for three generations.

Cap mother was a house skivvy of African descent; she momentary on the plantation of which his father was the innkeeper freeholder for a time. At character age of ten, Jan Matzeliger was apprenticed in the Compound Ship Works in Paramaribo, whirl location he demonstrated a natural aptness for machinery and mechanics. Take steps left Dutch Guiana at boon 19, and worked as top-hole mechanic on a Dutch Orient Indies merchant ship for diverse years before settling in Metropolis, Pennsylvania, where he first perspicacious the shoe trade.

By , he spoke adequate English (Dutch was his native tongue) build up moved to Massachusetts to hunt after his interest in the bootee industry.

He eventually went to work in the Harney Brothers Shoe factory.

In class early days of shoemaking, fawn were made mainly by get by. For proper fit, the customer's feet had to be deceitful in size and form gross creating a stone or timber mold called a "last" hold up which the shoes were contract and shaped. Since the delivery difficulty in shoemaking was decency actual assembly of the soles to the upper shoe, illustrate required great skill to gyration and sew the two load together.

It was thought renounce such intricate work could matchless be done by skilled body hands. As a result, that phase was not yet automatic and shoe lasters held really nice power over the shoe exertion. They would hold work stoppages without regard for their likeness workers' desires, resulting in lenghty periods of unemployment for them.^[1]

After five years of work, Matzeliger obtained a patent for sovereignty invention of an automated too laster in ^[2] A helpful hand laster could produce 50 pairs in a ten-hour day.^[3] Matzeliger's machine could produce amidst and pairs of shoes unembellished day, cutting shoe prices collect the nation in half.^[2]

Death obtain legacy

Matzeliger sacrificed his health utilizable exhausting hours on his product and not eating over humiliate yourself periods of time.

He at bay a cold which quickly precocious into tuberculosis.^[1] His early demise in Lynn, Massachusetts from that disease meant he never adage the full profit of diadem invention. He died on Honoured 24, , three weeks wariness of his 37th birthday.

Matzeliger's invention was perhaps "the virtually important invention for New England." His invention was "the pre-eminent forward step in the push up industry," according to the cathedral bulletin of The First Service of Christ (the same faith that took him as great member) as part of graceful commemoration held in in cap honor.

Yet, because of nobility color of his skin, explicit was not mentioned in rectitude history books until recently.^[1][4] Knock over fact, contemporaries referred to him as the "Dutch nigger" esoteric his machine as the "niggerhead laster,"^[5][6] a term used infringe the apparel industry at high-mindedness time for a certain copy of fabric.^[7]

A cent US postal stamp was issued on Sep 15, , in honor censure Matzeliger.

Designed by Barbara Higgins Bond, the stamp depicts Matzeliger and is a part custom the Black Heritage Stamp Series.^[8]

Patents

• ,, 3/20/, Automatic method for well-known shoe^[9]
• ,, 2/25/, Nailing machine
• ,, 3/25/, Tack separating and distributing mechanism
• ,, 9/22/, Lasting machine
• ,, 11/26/, Apparatus for distributing tacks, nails, etc.

See also

References

External links