Jan Ernst Matzeliger
{{short description|Dutch inventor}}
{{Infobox person
| image = Jan ernst matzeliger.gif
| caption = Matzeliger in 1885
| name = Jan Ernst Matzeliger
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1852|9|15|df=y}}
| birth_place = Paramaribo, Surinam
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1889|8|24|1852|9|15|df=y}}
| death_place = Lynn, Massachusetts, US
}}
Jan Ernst Matzeliger (September 15, 1852 – August 24, 1889) was a Surinamese-American inventor whose automated lasting machine brought significant change to the manufacturing of shoes. The Consolidated Lasting Machine Company company was founded to make his shoe making devices.{{Cite web|url=https://shoegazing.com/2015/10/25/history-the-lasting-machine/|title=History - The lasting machine|first=Jesper|last=Ingevaldsson|date=October 25, 2015}}{{Better ref needed|date=April 2025}}
Biography
Matzeliger was born in Dutch Guiana, now Suriname. His father, Ernst Carel Matzeliger Jr. (1823–1864), was a third generation Dutchman of German descent living in the Dutch Guiana capital city of Paramaribo. Ernst owned and operated the Colonial Shipworks that had been in his family for three generations. His mother was a house slave of African descent; she lived on the plantation of which his father was the owner for a time.{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}}
At age 10, Matzeliger was apprenticed in the Colonial Ship Works in Paramaribo, where he demonstrated a natural aptitude for machinery and mechanics. Matzeliger left Dutch Guiana at 19, and worked as a mechanic on a Dutch East Indies merchant ship for several years before settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he first learned the shoe trade. By 1877, he spoke adequate English (Dutch was his native tongue) and moved to Massachusetts to pursue his interest in the shoe industry. He eventually went to work in the Harney Brothers Shoe factory.
Matzeliger obtained a patent for his invention of an automated shoe laster in 1883.{{cite web |url=http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi522.htm |title=No. 522: Jan Matzeliger (transcript of radio show Engines of Our Ingenuity episode) |first1=Jan H.|last1=Lienhard |publisher=University of Houston|access-date=10 November 2017}} A skilled hand laster could produce 50 pairs in a ten-hour day.{{cite web|url=http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/jan-matzeliger.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120219182822/http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/jan-matzeliger.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=19 February 2012|title=Jan Matzeliger|first1=Gaius|last1=Chamberlain|date=23 March 2012|website=The Black Inventor Online Museum|publisher=Adscape International, LLC|access-date=10 November 2017}} Matzeliger's machine could produce between 150 and 700 pairs of shoes a day, cutting shoe prices across the nation in half.
=Death and legacy=
His early death in Lynn, Massachusetts from tuberculosis meant he never saw the full profit of his invention.{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}} Matzeliger died on August 24, 1889, aged 36.{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}}
Matzeliger's invention was perhaps "the most important invention for New England" and "the greatest forward step in the shoe industry," according to the church bulletin of The First Church of Christ (where he was a member) as part of a commemoration held in 1967 in his honor. Contemporaries referred to him as the "Dutch nigger" and his machine as the "niggerhead laster,"{{Citation|last=Smeulders|first=Valika|title=Matzeliger, Jan Ernst|date=2016-06-01|work=African American Studies Center|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.74508|isbn=978-0-19-530173-1}}{{Cite journal|last=Kaplan|first=Sidney|date=January 1955|title=Jan Earnst Matzeliger and the Making of the Shoe|journal=The Journal of Negro History|language=en|volume=40|issue=1|pages=8–33|doi=10.2307/2715446|jstor=2715446|s2cid=149459743|issn=0022-2992}} a term used in the apparel industry at the time for a certain type of fabric.{{cite book |last1=Tortora |first1=Phyllis G. |last2=Johnson |first2=Ingrid |title=The Fairchild Books Dictionary of Textiles |edition=8th |date=2013 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |location=New York |isbn=9781609015350 |page=414}}
A 29-cent US postal stamp was issued on September 15, 1991, in honor of Matzeliger. Designed by Barbara Higgins Bond, the stamp depicts Matzeliger and is a part of the Black Heritage Stamp Series.{{Cite web|url=https://arago.si.edu/category_2041275.html|title=Arago: 1991 Black Heritage Series: Jan E. Matzeliger Issue|website=arago.si.edu|access-date=2019-10-23}}
Matzeliger was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.{{Cite web|url=https://www.invent.org/inductees/jan-ernst-matzeliger|title=NIHF Inductee Jan Matzeliger Invented the Shoe Lasting Machine|date=April 7, 2025|website=www.invent.org}}
Patents
- 274,207, 20 March 1883, Automatic method for lasting shoe{{cite web | url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US274207A/en?oq=Us274207 | title=Thirds to melville S }}
- 421,954, 25 February 1890, Nailing machine
- 423,937, 25 March 1890, Tack separating and distributing mechanism
- 459,899, 22 September 1891, Lasting machine
- 415,726, 26 November 1899, Mechanism for distributing tacks, nails, etc.
See also
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [https://ethw.org/Jan_Matzeliger Engineering and Technology: Jan Matzeliger]
- [http://search.eb.com/blackhistory/article-9051466 Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to Black History]
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Category:African-American inventors
Category:19th-century American inventors
Category:Surinamese emigrants to the United States
Category:Surinamese people of Dutch descent
Category:19th-century deaths from tuberculosis