Jan ernst matzeliger machine

Jan Matzeliger conceived, patented, built working models, and factory-tested a machine known as a shoe-lasting machine, and he eventually became a stockholder in the company that manufactured it. Matzeliger's shoe-lasting machine could produce to pairs of shoes a day. His mother was a native Surinamese of African descent, and his father, a Dutch engineer who had been sent to the island colony to take charge of the government machine works, was a well-educated man and a member of a wealthy and aristocratic Dutch family.

Jan served as an apprentice in a government machine shop supervised by his father. He developed an interest in machines, eventually becoming a skilled machinist. At the age of 19 he signed on as a seaman with the Dutch East Indies Company and went to sea. He helped fix the engines on the steamship to which he was assigned. He spent two years sailing to the Far East, then came to North America with his ship.

By , he spoke adequate English and had moved to Massachusetts. After a while, Jan Matzeliger went to work in a shoe factory.

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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. As he worked in shoe factories around Lynn and Boston, he heard it said many times that it was impossible to last shoes by machines; the job simply could not be done.

In secret he started experimenting, first with a crude wooden machine, then with a model made out of scrap iron. For ten years he worked, steadily and patiently, with no encouragement. Indeed, when the news of his tinkering finally reached the public, there were jeers of derision.