Black Month Celebrates: JAN ERNST MATZELIGER

"Sidney W. Winslow, owner of the United Shoe Machinery Company in Boston, also bloasted about the contribution of another African American inventor, Jan Ernst Matzeliger (1852-1889).

Winslow wrote in his autobiography, published in 1917, that his company employed 5,000 people and represented the consolidation of over forty subsidiaries. His company, he said, was made possible after he bought the rights to use a shoe-lasting machine patented by Matzeliger, a BLACK MAN. Winslow further described how his company had benefited from the Matzeliger machine:

The wages of workers greatly increased, the
hours of labor diminished and the factory conditions surrounding the laborers immensely improved. The improvement thus brought about in the quality and price of American shoes has made the Americans the best show people in the world.

This was quite a tribute to a man whose invention, when first introduced, was called "the machine" by angry workers who were unhappy about losing their jobs to a machine-especially one made by an African American. And what of Matzeliger? Sadly, he was unable to accept either praise or blame for his accomplishments, because he had DIED before he could enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Jan Matzeliger's shoe-lasting machine was the DREAM of a young man born in 1852. In the same year, Martin R. Delaney (1812-1885) a physician, inventor, and social activist, was denied a patent because he was NOT considered a citizen. Delaney's device was designed to assist trains in ascending and descending steep slopes. Delaney was so disappointed, he left for Central America in search of more opportunities available to black men. He later returned and fought for the Union Army during the Civil War and earned rank of major.

Matzelinger who was born in Dutch Guiana (now Suriname) in South America, the son of a Dutch engineer and a Surinamese woman of African descent, came to the United States seeking opportunity. The Civil War was over and the newly freed slaves were taking advantage of the freedom and citizenship they had been granted by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

For a while, Matzeliger worked as a shoemaker's apprentice, first in Philadelphia and then in Lynn, Massachusetts. He learned to make shoes the way people had done it for centuries--by hand. Shoemakers pounded the leather with a stone to soften it. Next, they cut the leather, then stretched it over a wooden mold called a "last." They punched holes in the leather with an awl and sewed the shoe to the sole.

Handmade shoes were so expensive, only the wealthy could afford more than one pair. Poor people wore ill-fitting hand me downs or no shoes at all.

By the 1880s many handcrafted goods were being manufactured by machines that produced more things faster and more economically. There were machines then that cut, sewed and tacked shoes. But shoemaking had not been industrialized totally, because nobody had invented an automatic shoe-lasting machine that attached the upper portion of the shoe-the form-to the bottom part-the sole. Such a machine would be able to cut the production cost of shoes in half.

Matzeliger devoted every hour he could spare to working on an idea for a shoe-lasting machine. Each time he thought a design had been perfected, something went wrong. But Matzelinger WOULDN'T GIVE UP. He worked during the day at a shoemaker's shop, and spent the evening poring over his model, often forgetting to eat or take care of himself. He felt he was close to achieving his goal, but he needed more time. Matzeliger quit his job and devoted all his energies toward his machine. When his money ran out and his health began to fail, he turned to two businessmen for help: C. H. Delsnow and M. S. Nichols.

Each man bought in a third of the shares in the invention. With some financial security now, Matzeliger labored on. Finally, in 1882, Matzeliger's machine lasted seventy-five pairs of shoes. Success! He applied for a patent right away but the mechanical drawings were SO ADVANCED and the process SO COMPLEX, the examiner from the patent office visited Matzeliger, who personally demonstrated how his machine worked.

Nervously, Matzeliger put the parts of the shoe in place. The machine took over from there. It gripped and pulled the leather down around the heel, guided and drove the nails into place and finally discharged the completed show. Jan E. Matzeliger was granted a patent on March 20, 1883 (patent #274,207).

Unfortunately, thirty-seven year old Matzeliger died of tuberculosis in 1889, four years after Martin Delaney had died in Pittsburgh where he had practiced medical since the Civil War ended. Matzeliger had been able to do something Delaney had been denied: obtain a patent on his invention.

Matzeliger was never able to enjoy any financial rewards for all his work. Since he never married, he willed his third of his shares in his inventions to friends and to what is now the First Church of Christ in Lynn, Massachusetts. Jan Matzeliger's machine revolutionized the shoe making industry by cutting the cost of producing shoes by 50 percent. This made it possible for the average person to afford a pair of shoes-maybe even two pairs. Yet, less than fifteen years after his death, most people didn't know that Matzeliger was a BLACK MAN.

An article written about the shoe-lasting machine FALSELY identified the inventor as WHITE. In 1912, a researched traced Matzeliger back to Lynn, where a certified copy of his death certificate was found. It stated Matzeliger was mulatto--a term used to describe a person who had a least one black parent.

Matzeliger finally received the honor that was his due in 1991, when the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative STAMP honoring him as an African American whose invented helped make life BETTER for people all over the world."
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Excerpts from "African American Inventors"

McKissack Patricia and Frederick "African American Inventors" Brookfield, Connecticut:The Milbrook Press 1994:48-53pp

I used to have these black history flash cards when I was young. Matzeliger was my favorite figure from the group. Even today I have a single postage stamp with his image on it. Not sure how old the stamp is, but it's back when postage for 1st Class mail cost 29 cents.

I hear ya Sistagurl... I feel that way about Malcolm X. When his stamp came out...I put it in a frame. Cuz I was sooo outdone that the postal service gave give him a stamp! Go figure. Malcolm was not only my idol but STILL ranks very high to this day in terms of black heroes.

I think it was the early 90s when everybody was wearing "X" medallions, and Malcolm's image was on everything. It seemed fad-ish. I didn't want to just go with the flow; I got curious. So, I read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and fell in love! It is one of my absolute favorite books! It makes me wonder, "what if?

As for Matzeliger, I remember that his father was Dutch so his is pronounced "Yan" Mat-ZEL-iger.