lleged infringer before dropping the case and joining the competitor. However, although the resulting Copeland-McKay lasting machine was reasonably effective when making heavier varieties of boots and shoes, it proved to be useless when the factory was manufacturing footwear with pointed toes or fine women’s shoes made from thin leather. This situation was a particular problem for shoemakers in the city of Lynn, as such footwear was the mainstay of their businesses.
From small beginnings
The solution to this problem originated in South America’s smallest country. In 1852, Jan Ernst Matzeliger was born on a coffee plantation in Dutch Guiana, (now called Suriname). His father, Ernst Matzeliger, was an engineer and his mother was a ‘house slave’ of African descent. At ten years of age, Jan became an apprentice in the Colonial Ship Works in the capital city of Paramaribo, where he was described as ‘demonstrating a natural aptitude for machinery and mechanics’. At the age of 19, he decided to go to sea, and spent two years working as a mechanic on a Dutch East Indies merchant ship before settling in Philadelphia, USA. As he spoke very little English at that time, it was difficult for Matzeliger to find a satisfying job, and he appears to have spent the next few years moving from one minor labouring role to another.
It was while in Philadelphia that he first became involved in the shoe trade. In 1877, Matzeliger moved to the city of Lynn, Massachusetts to pursue his interest in shoemaking. After starting an apprenticeship in Harney Brothers Shoe factory in Lynn, he is said to have worked for ten hours a day making shoes while his evenings were taken up with his continuing study of English. As was typical of the day, the company had machinery to use for most of the processes, but lasting was still done by hand.
This situation obviously captured Matzeliger’s attention, as he became determined to automate the process. His machine would have to quickly and easily pull the upper leather over the last, so reducing the time taken for this stage of production as well as the cost involved. It took Matzeliger several years of experimentation with scrap material until he had designed a machine for the purpose. By 1880, he had built a model of his lasting machine from wooden cigar boxes, elastic and wire.
The next step
Once his crude model worked, Matzeliger turned his attention to building a prototype. Realising that this would require sufficient working space and access to machine tools, he persuaded local shoemakers Beal Brothers to give him a job, a secure working area where he could work on his project and permission to use the company’s machine tools. Matzeliger is said to have searched through junkyards and factory dumps in order to find usable parts from broken machinery and altering them to fit his requirements. Two years later, his working machine was finished.
Although at an early stage of development, Matzeliger’s invention was capable of pleating the leather around the toe of a last. He filed for a patent on January 24th 1882, but the detail on his 15 pages of text and drawings was so complex, that a United States Patent and Trademark Office inspector had to visit him to have the workings of his machine explained. On March 20th 1883, Jan Matzeliger received the patent for his lasting machine, which took hold of an upper by means of pincers, pulled it over the last, held it in place and pinned the leather to the last. Instead of the 60 pairs a day achieved by a really good hand laster, Matzeliger’s machine could help to produce up to 700 pairs daily.
The story was by no means over. It took Matzeliger another three years to build a machine he felt was ready for the footwear industry. During this time, he made a number of engineering improvements that warranted a second patent, and the Matzeliger lasting machine was finally ready for its first demonstration on May 29th 1885. A worker placed an insole and an upper on a last and positioned this combination on the machine. When operating, the machine drove in a tack, turned the sho