The Colored Inventor | Page 7

seemed anxious to get through with his job quickly, for he devised a machine used as an adjunct in tabulating the statistics from the manufacturers' schedules in a way that displaced a dozen men in a given quantity of work, doing the work economically, speedily and with faultless precision, when operated under Mr. Pelham's skilful direction. Mr. Pelham has also been granted a patent for his invention, and the proved efficiency of his devices induced the United States government to lease them from him, paying him a royalty for their use, in addition to his salary for operating them.
Mr. Pelham's mechanical genius is evidently "running in the family," for his oldest son, now a high-school youth, has distinguished himself by his experiments in wireless telegraphy, and is one of the very few colored boys in Washington holding a regular license for operating the wireless.
Mr. W. A. Lavalette, of the Government Printing Office, the largest printing establishment in the world, began his career as a printer there years before the development of that art called into use the wonderful machines employed in it to-day; and one of his first efforts was to devise a printing machine superior to the pioneer type used at that time. This was in 1879, and he succeeded that year in inventing and patenting a printing machine that was a notable novelty in its day, though it has, of course, long ago been superseded by others.
I have reserved for the last the name and work of Jan Matzeliger, of Massachusetts. Although there are barely half a dozen patents standing in his name on the records of the office, and his name is little known to the general public, there are, I think, some points in his career that easily make him conspicuous above all the rest, and I have found the story really inspiring.
As a very young man Matzeliger worked in a shoe shop in Lynn, Mass., serving his apprenticeship at that trade. Seeking, in the true spirit of the inventor, to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, he devised the first complete machine ever invented for performing automatically all the operations involved in attaching soles to shoes. Other machines had previously been made for performing a part of these operations, but Matzeliger's machine was the only one then known to the mechanical world that could simultaneously hold the last in place to receive the leather, move it forward step by step so that other co-acting parts might draw the leather over the heel, properly punch and grip the upper and draw it down over the last, plait the leather properly at the heel and toe, feed the nails to the driving point, hold them in position while being driven, and then discharge the completely soled shoe from the machine, everything being done automatically, and requiring less than a minute to complete a single shoe.
This wonderful achievement marked the beginning of a distinct revolution in the art of making shoes by machinery. Matzeliger realized this, and attempted to capitalize it by organizing a stock company to market his invention; but his plans were frustrated through failing health and lack of business experience, and shortly thereafter, at the age of 36, he passed away.
He had done his work, however, under the keen eye of the shrewd Yankees, and these were quick to see the immense commercial importance of the step he had accomplished. One of these bought the patent and all of the stock that he could find of the company organized by Matzeliger. This fortunate purchase laid the foundation for the organization of the United Shoe Machinery Company, the largest and richest corporation of the kind in the world. (See, in Munsey's Magazine of August, 1912, on page 722, biographical sketch of Mr. Sidney Winslow, millionaire head of the United Shoe Machinery Company.)
Some idea may be had of the magnitude of this giant industry, which is thus shown to have grown directly out of the inventions of a young colored man, by recalling the fact that the corporation represents the consolidation of forty-one different smaller companies, that its factories cover twenty-one acres of ground, that it gives employment daily to 4,200 persons, that its working capital is quoted at $20,860,000, and that it controls more than 300 patents representing improvements in the machines it produces. From an article published in the Lynn (Mass.) News, of October 3, 1889, it appears that the United Shoe Machinery Company, above mentioned, established at Lynn a school, the only one of its kind in the world, where boys are taught exclusively to operate the Matzeliger type of machine; that a class of about 200 boys and young men are graduated from this school annually and sent out to various parts of the world to instruct others