Jan Ernst Matzeliger
Inventor of the automatic shoe-lasting machine
At a glance
- Inventor
- Jan Ernst Matzeliger
- Life
- 1852–1889
- Birthplace
- Paramaribo, Suriname
- Country
- Suriname / United States
- Region
- South America
- Era
- 1800s
- Fields
- Industry & Materials
- Evidence
- Verified
- Records
- 1 in this archive
What they did
A Surinamese immigrant working in the shoe factories of Lynn, Massachusetts, Matzeliger built a machine that shaped the upper of a shoe over the last and attached it to the sole.
Historical context
Lasting was the one step no machine could do. Hand lasters were the aristocracy of the shoe trade and the bottleneck of the entire industry: about 50 pairs a day.
The legacy
His machine handled hundreds of pairs per day and cut shoe prices sharply. He died of tuberculosis at 37, before the patent's value was realised.
The evidence
US Patent 274,207 — Lasting machine
Primary recordMatzeliger machine and factory records
Institutional record
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 1
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.