Matzeliger jan biography definition

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. His father, Ernst Carel Martzilger jr.

(–), was a third generation Dutchman of German descent living in the Dutch Guiana capital city of Paramaribo.

Matzeliger jan biography definition ap

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