Popular Science Manufacture of Boots and Shoes

Popular Science, Volume 41, August 1892

Notes

• takes most output of national tanneries
• advances date from civil war, scarcity of labor during war
• settlers adopted moccasins, but “did not meet the ideas of the Europeans”
• Lynn
  • Philip Kertland
  • “City of Shoes”
  • Edmund Bridges

• shoemakers went around from house to house and worked up the family stock of leather

• ambitious makers would order shoes from England and take them apart

• no real progress was made in the business until John Adams Dagyr, a Welsh shoemaker, moved to Lynn in 1750

• died in the almshouse
• Marblehead, Danvers, Haverhill
• Lynn known for women’s shoes
• first 1789 Congress imposed tariff
  • John B. Alley
  • efforts of Ebenezer Breed
• machinery
  • sewing uppers
  • strip leather and cut soles
• operators’ fingers chopped off by sole cutters
• production operations subdivided minutely

• its dozen journeymen had lost their individuality in the hundreds of operatives

• 1809 David Meade Randolph: machine for fastening soles with nails
  • lasts with plates
  • clinch nails
• Mark Isambard Brunel: nails
• two courses
  • pegged, nailed, screwed
  • stitched
• 1851 A.C. Gallahue
• Joseph Walker invented shoe peg around 1818
• machines for making pegs
• Gallahue improved by E. Townsend and B.F. Sutrtevant
• Lyman R. Blake
• applied for English patent

• As perfected, they got patents on it in 1860, which gave them the practical control of the machine-made boots in this country for many years.

• None of the machines were sold outright to manufacturers, but they were let to them on the payment or royalties…

• Figure 10: Copeland Rapid Laster

• The close way in which the McKay machine was held tended to check further improvements for a time.

• Goodyear
• August Destory 1862 patent for curved-needle machine sewing outsoles to welts, but didn’t work well
• Charles Goodyear Jr. changed the swinging movement

• In hand sewing the thread is drawn clear through its full length each time, and thus is weakened by constant wear.

• lasting the most difficult
  • 1842 English patent
  • McKay and Copeland US patents in 1862
  • Copeland laster for men’s work
  • Boston Lasting Machine Company for women’s and misses’
• lastmaking
  • 1815 Thomas Blanchard lathe