Today’s Black Fact:
Jan Matzeliger
Jan Ernst Matzeliger was an African-American inventor in the shoe industry. Matzeliger was born in Paramaribo (then Dutch Guyana, now Suriname). His father was a Dutch engineer and his mother a black Surinamese slave. He had some interest in mechanics in his native country, but his efforts at inventing a shoe-lasting machine began in the United States after a life of working in a machinery shop. He settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 19 after working as a sailor. By 1877, he spoke adequate English and had moved to Massachusetts. After a while, he went to work in a shoe factory. At the time, no machine could attach the upper part of a shoe to the sole. This had to be done manually by a “hand laster”; a skilled one could produce 50 pairs in a ten-hour day. After five years of work, Matzeliger obtained a patent for his invention in 1883. His machine could produce between 150 to 700 pairs of shoes a day, cutting shoe prices across the nation in half. However, his early death in Lynn, Massachusetts fromtuberculosis mean’t he never saw the full profit of his invention. In recognition of his accomplishment, he was honored on a postage stamp on September 15, 1991.
