Jan Ernst Matzeliger

Jan Ernst Matzeliger ( born September 15, 1852 the plantation Twijfelachtig on Cottica in Suriname; † August 24, 1889 in Lynn, Massachusetts) was an inventor.

Life

Matzeliger was still Jr. during slavery, the son of Ernst Carel Martzilger (1823-1864) and the slave Aletta on the coffee plantation Twijfelachtig born on Cottica River. As a child of a slave you were automatically assumed to be born into slavery. His father was at that time owner of this plantation, which he sold to his brother Alexander Christie in 1854. In 1862, a year before the abolition of slavery in the Dutch colony of Surinam, the sister of Ernst Carel Martzilger Jr., Maria Jacoba Henriette Martzilger procured widowed Christie ( 1827-1890 ) the release ( manumissio ) her nephew. With the ransom he was named Jan Ernst Martzilger. Jan Ernst came a few years after his birth from the plantation Twijfelachtig in the household of his aunt to Paramaribo.

Shortly after the ransom, he began a technical training as a toolmaker at the service of Colonial vehicles in Paramaribo.

United States

Jan Ernst Martzilger left in 1871 his native land and hired as a sailor on a cargo ship. Three years later, he mustered into the United States and began an apprenticeship as a shoemaker in Baltimore. Via New York City and Boston, and after various jobs he came to Lynn in 1877 in Massachusetts. Lynn was the center of the American shoe industry and he became assistant here from a small shoe manufacturer. A year later, the ambitious immigrant was naturalized and he was under the surname Matzeliger American citizen.

In Lynn, he began developing a prototype for the mechanization of work processes in the shoe factory, and in 1882 he presented a working prototype, a special shoe sewing machine, which connected the shoe uppers and soles together. The manufacture of shoes was mechanized through this lasting machine and they could be produced much cheaper and faster. On 20 March 1883, Matzeliger has patented this machine and putting them as their inventor.

Jan Ernst Matzeliger died three weeks before his 37th birthday in Lynn tuberculosis.

Honors

The city of Lynn appointed in 1984 a bridge in honor of the inventor and the. U.S. Post Office was to commemorate Matzeliger on 15 September 1991, a special stamp.