After a full day of work, the ambitious Matzeliger went to night school to improve his English and was soon studying books on mechanical science and physics. He began designing a shoe lasting machine, despite his lack of formal education and the derision of naysayers who declared that lasting couldn’t possibly be done by machine.
Using whatever materials he could find—cigar boxes, scraps of wood, wire, and nails–Matzeliger built a prototype of a machine to imitate the motions of a hand laster. Without enough capital to build a solid model to secure the patent, the inventor had to sell two-thirds of the rights to his shoe lasting device to investors, one of whom was Sidney Winslow. The United States Patent Office issued Patent #274,207 to Matzeliger in 1883 for the lasting device. Later, he would secure additional patents for an improved shoe lasting machine and a nailing machine.
Matzeliger traded his one-third interest in the original patent for stock in the Consolidated Lasting Machine Company. This company manufactured and sold Matzeliger’s machine to shoe factories, but sadly, he did not live to see the fruits of his labor. He died of tuberculosis in 1889, at the age of 37. Years later, in 1897, Sidney Winslow started the United Shoe Machinery Corporation and enjoyed tremendous wealth from Matzeliger’s invention. Winslow’s corporation made $50 million in the next dozen years and put Lynn, MA on the map as the shoe capital of the world.
Matzeliger’s lasting device revolutionized shoe manufacturing by increasing productivity and efficiency by at least 300 percent, which in turn, cut shoe prices by 50 percent. Whereas the daily output of a hand laster was about 50 pairs, the lasting machine could finish between 150 and 700 pairs per day. The lasting machine made what seemed impossible at the time—affordable shoes—available to us, the masses. You could call Jan Matzeliger the inventor of the original half-off shoe sale.
Trivia
Matzeliger is not a household name but it should be. He was honored on a 29 cent first class U.S. postage stamp in 1991.
Sources:
Jan Matzeliger. 13 April 2006. [link]
“Matzeliger, Jan Ernst.” African American Encyclopedia. Second edition. 2001.
“Matzeliger, Jan Ernst.” World Book Encyclopedia. 2006 edition.
Stereoview and other images. 24 April 2006. [link]
