Matzeliger jan ernst biography of martinez
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It took six months for Matzeliger to make a model of his machine--it was made only of old cigar boxes, wire, nails, and scrap wood, but another inventor offered him fifty dollars for it. Shoe manufacturingboomed in New England, and exports reached a new high.
In 1810, Marc Isambard Brunel, a Frenchman working in London, set up machines to mass produce nailed army shoes. Once saved, open the image file and use your device's print function to print it.
Jan Matzlieger
Jan Ernst Matzeliger was born in 1852 in Paramaribo, Surinam (Dutch Guiana) to a Dutch engineer father and a native black Surinamese mother.
He experimented with wooden models, then iron models, and finally, in 1883, he applied for a patent on a “lasting machine.”
On March 20, 1883, Matzeliger received patent number 274,207 for a machine that held a shoe on a last, gripped and pulled the leather down around the heel, set and drove in the nails, and then discharged the completed shoe.
In 1873, he settled in Philadelphia, and by 1877 he had moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, where he became an apprentice in a shoe factory.
At the time, shoes were usually made by hand. The Consolidated Lasting Machine Company was formed to manufacture the devices, and Matzelinger was given a large amount of stock in the organization.
Because of the complex movements required to stretch shoe leather around a last, and the importance of the lasting process to the final look of a shoe, earlier attempts to mechanize the process had failed. He developed an interest in machines, eventually becoming a skilled machinist. From 1899 to 1910, the United Shoe Machinery Corporation earned over $50 million and held 98% of the shoe machinery business.
In spite of his success,he made few changes in his simple lifestyle. In the meantime, Matzeliger also took a part-time job driving coaches that transported young people to a local park forrecreation.
By 1882, Matzeliger had completed the scrap-metal model. Thelasters had a strong union and were considered kings of the shoemaking trade.
Unfortunately, skilled jobs were not open to blacks in the segregated job market of the city. His new job would be to circulate through the factory and check on, and repair, all of the machines. With a good model underway, Matzeliger could apply for a patent by submitting detailed drawings and a complete description of his invention.
In Washington, D.C., the patent officials could not understand the complicated drawings, and they didn't believe the machine could do what its inventor claimed it could.
Lasting, crucial to the quality of the shoe, determines its fit, walking ease, and look. He again refused the offer. Finally, Harney Brothers hired him to sew shoes on the familiar McKay sole-sewing machine. This final step involved connecting the upper part of the shoe to the inner sole, a process called lasting.