Inventions in the centuryDoolittle, William H. (William Henry)
History
Inventions in the century
Doolittle, William H. (William Henry)
Inventions
There are also corrugating, creasing, fluting, pebbling, piercing and
punching machines; machines for grinding the bark and also for grinding
the leather; machines for gluing sections of leather together, and
machines for sewing them; machines for rounding flat strips of leather,
for the making of whips and tubes; machines for scalloping the edges;
and a very ingenious machine for assorting leather strips or strings
according to their size or thickness.
The most important improvements of the century in leather working relate
to the manufacture of boots and shoes. It could well be said of boots
and shoes, especially those made for the great mass of humanity, before
the modern improvements in means and processes had been invented: “Their
feet through faithless leather met the dirt.”
It is true that in the eighteenth century, both in Europe and America,
the art of leather and boot and shoe making had so far advanced that
good durable foot wear was produced by long and tedious processes of
tanning, and by careful making up of the leather into boots and shoes by
hand; the knife, the awl, the waxed thread, the nails and hammer and
other hand tools of the character above referred to being employed. But
the process was a tedious and costly one and the articles produced were
beyond the limits of the poor man’s purse. Hence the wooden shoes, and
those made of coarse hide and dressed and undressed skins, and of coarse
cloth, mixed or unmixed with leather.
In 1809, David Mead Randolph of England patented machinery for riveting
soles and heels to the uppers instead of sewing them together.
The celebrated civil engineer, Isambard M. Brunel, shortly thereafter
added several machines of his own invention to Randolph’s method, and he
established a large manufactory for the making chiefly of army shoes.
The various separate processes performed by his machines involved the
cutting out of the leather, hardening it by rolling, securing the welt
on to the inner sole by small nails, and studding the outer sole with
larger nails. Divisions of men were employed to work each separate step,
and the shoes were passed from one process to another until complete.
Large quantities of shoes were made at reduced prices, but complaints
were made as to the nails penetrating into the shoe and hurting the
feet. The demand for army shoes fell off, and the system was abandoned;
but it had incited invention in the direction of machine-made shoes and
the day of exclusive hand labour was doomed.
About 1818 Joseph Walker of Hopkinston, Massachusetts invented the
wooden peg. Making and applying pegs by hand was too slow work, and
machines were at once contrived for making them. As one invention
necessitates and begets others, so special forms of machines for sawing
and working up wood into pegs were devised.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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