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though it has, of course, long ago been superseded by others.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 organi