The whole industry said no machine could shape a shoe. A quiet immigrant built one after his shifts.
In the shoe factories of 1870s New England, machines could cut leather and sew soles, but one job stayed by hand: lasting. That meant pulling the upper tight over a wooden foot-form, pleating it at the toe and heel, and tacking it to the insole. Hand lasters were the best-paid men on the floor, and they could hold a whole factory up. Well-funded inventors had tried to build a machine for the job and failed. People in the trade said it couldn't be done.
Jan Ernst Matzeliger ran a sole-sewing machine in Lynn, Massachusetts. He was the son of a Dutch engineer and an enslaved Black woman from Suriname, he still thought in Dutch, and several of the town's churches turned him away. After ten-hour shifts he built models out of cigar boxes, scrap wood and wire. In 1883 he patented a machine that did what the hand lasters did. Within a few years America's shoes cost about half as much. He died at 36, before he could see most of it.
From Paramaribo to Lynn
The lifeline
1852
Born 15 September in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (now Suriname)
c. 1862
At about ten, apprenticed in the machine shops his father oversaw
1873
After two years at sea, lands in Philadelphia with almost no English
1877
Moves to Lynn, Massachusetts, and starts work in a shoe factory
1883
US Patent No. 274,207 granted for his lasting machine on 20 March
1889
Dies of tuberculosis in Lynn on 24 August, aged 36
By the numbers
The measure of the machine
700
Pairs of shoes a day his machine could last at its best. A skilled hand laster managed about 50
½
Roughly how much the machine cut the cost of making shoes across America
4 of 5
His patents that were granted only after he died
36
His age at death, three weeks before his 37th birthday
Pairs lasted in a working day
Skilled hand laster
~50
Machine, low end
150
Machine, high end
700
These are commonly cited figures for a ten-hour day. Actual output depended on the shoe and the operator.
What he built
The work
1877–82
The models. He watched the lasters by day and sketched at night. His first models were made from cigar boxes, scrap wood, wire and nails, and he is said to have gone short of food to pay for parts.
c. 1882
The partners. To finish a working machine he sold a two-thirds interest to two Lynn backers, Charles H. Delnow and Melville S. Nichols, and kept one third himself.
1883
Patent No. 274,207, for a “lasting machine”, granted on 20 March. The drawings were so intricate that, as the story is usually told, the examiners in Washington could not follow them until someone saw the machine working in Lynn.
1885
The public trial. On 29 May the production model lasted 75 pairs of shoes in one run, a record at the time. New investors came in and the Consolidated Lasting Machine Company was formed. He took stock for his patent rights.
1889–91
The last inventions. Even while ill he kept working on a nailing machine, a tack separator and distributor, and an improved lasting machine. All four patents were granted after his death.
Shut out, then honoured
Recognition
In his lifetime
Turned away by several churches in Lynn. The North Congregational Church took him in, and he taught Sunday school there
Gave up two-thirds of his invention to get it built
Traded his patent rights for company stock. The fortunes went to the financiers
Died of tuberculosis at 36, before the machine had changed the industry
Since
1899: his company merges into the United Shoe Machinery Corporation, which comes to dominate American shoemaking
1984: Lynn names a bridge after him
1991: a 29¢ US stamp in the Black Heritage series is issued on his birthday
2006: inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame
The place that made him
Lynn, Massachusetts
Lynn, on the North Shore just above Boston, had made shoes since colonial times. It was the industry's centre when a young stranger from South America arrived. He painted in oils, taught painting, and gave his time to the church that welcomed him. In his will he left a large share of his stock to the North Congregational Church, now the First Church of Christ, which honoured him again in 1967.
1877
The year he reached Lynn, after four years in Philadelphia
12 yrs
He lived in Lynn for twelve years, the rest of his life
1984
The year the city put his name on a bridge
“Today, a black immigrant provides shoes for America.”
— John H. Lienhard, The Engines of Our Ingenuity, No. 522
