Jan Ernest MatzeligerDied 24 Aug 1889 at age 36 (born 15 Sep 1852).Dutch Guianian-American inventor who is best known for his shoe-lasting machine that revolutionished the shoe industry by replacing the hand work of attaching the sole to the upper of a shoe. He left his homeland of Dutch Guiana and sailed for America at age 19. He settled in Lynn, Massachussetts, by about age 25, where he became a shoe stitching machine operator. There he saw the tedious and slow process of finishing the shoe by hand, and resolved to develop a machine able to do that job more efficiently. Despite being so poor that obtaining materials was difficult, he made a wooden model. He obtained a patent for his invention, issued on 20 Mar 1883. With improvements, by 1885, he had a production model ready, able to produce shoes far more rapidly than hand workers. He died of tuberculosis at the early age of not yet 37.« |
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