e, pleated the leather, drove in another tack, and continued until the shoe was finished. This exactly reproduced the technique used by hand lasters, but only took one minute to complete.
Matzeliger attracted two investors, reaching a deal in which he transferred two-thirds of any profits from sales of his machine to Melville Nichols and Charles Delnow, who formed a company to market this new creation. Towards the end of the decade, Matzeliger’s patent was sold to the Consolidated McKay Lasting Machine Company. This organisation grew quickly and, with demand for the lasting machine proving substantial, it soon merged with several other shoe machine manufacturers to form the United Shoe Machinery Company.
Sadly, perhaps having exhausted himself with his obsessive desire to design a machine to finally automate the one remaining footwear manufacturing process, Jan Matzeliger died at just 36 years of age in 1889, from tuberculosis.
Matzeliger’s machine is described as transforming an industry, building a great corporation and producing several millionaires – although he was not one of them. By the start of the 20th century, the city of Lynn had become a major centre for footwear production, with more than 230 factories manufacturing over a million pairs of shoes each day. This success was in no small part as a result of Jan Matzeliger’s invention of the lasting machine, and today virtually all mass-produced shoes are lasted by machine. To mark this young man’s legacy, a 29 cent US postal stamp was issued in 1991 in Matzeliger’s honour.
This article was originally published on page 38 of the May 2020 issue of SATRA Bulletin.