Jan matzeliger biography invention of the telephone

Dutch inventor

Jan Ernst Matzeliger (September 15, – August 24, ) was a Surinamese-American inventor whose automated lasting machine brought significant change to the manufacturing of shoes.

The United Shoe Machinery Corporation company was founded to make his shoe making devices.

Biography

Matzeliger was born in Dutch Guiana, now Suriname.

Jan Ernst Matzeliger was born in Dutch Guiana, the son of a Black woman and a Dutch engineer.

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Matzeliger was born in present-day Suriname to a wealthy Dutch engineer and a slave of African descent.

Jan Ernst Matzeliger was born in Paramaribo, Suriname (then Dutch Guyana).

Jan Matzeliger​​ However, in , Matzeliger invented a lasting machine, which held the shoe in place and mechanically nailed the pieces.

His father, Ernst Carel Martzilger jr. (–), was a third generation Dutchman of German descent living in the Dutch Guiana capital city of Paramaribo. He owned and operated the Colonial Shipworks that had been in his family for three generations.

His mother was a house slave of African descent; she lived on the plantation of which his father was the owner for a time. At the age of ten, Jan Matzeliger was apprenticed in the Colonial Ship Works in Paramaribo, where he demonstrated a natural aptitude for machinery and mechanics.

He left Dutch Guiana at age 19, and worked as a mechanic on a Dutch East Indies merchant s