Christian Dancel

Background

Christian Dancel was born on February 14, 1847 in Cassel, Germany.

Education

Dancel was educated in the graded and polytechnic schools in Cassel and completed the mechanical engineering course, after which he learned the machinist’s trade.

Career

When a little over eighteen years of age, Dancel emigrated to the United States and settled in New York City. Working for the next two years as a practical machinist in different shops about New York, Dancel during this time devised a machine for sewing shoes.

Soon after this, Charles Goodyear, Jr. , who was engaged in the manufacture of shoe-machinery in New York, bought Dancel’s device and engaged him as superintendent of his factory.

The latter first undertook improve Dana followed John Adams in distinguishing between the interests of the aristocratic “few” and the “many, ” and his belief that the system of checks and balances in a republican govern- merits on his own and other inventions and built the first practical machines for sewing turned shoes.

About 1870, he turned his attention to making machines for sewing shoe-welts and stitching the out-soles. Using one of the turned-shoe machines as a foundation, he first altered it into a “stitcher, ” fifty models of which were made and sold to different manufacturers. He then devised and patented a welt-guide, and by adding it to the same machine, produced in 1874 one which would sew both turns and welts. This machine, which Goodyear began manufacturing in 1875, is still used, with minor improvements, in shoe manufacture.

In 1876 Dancel opened a machine-shop of his own and patented a number of small machines used in the finishing of shoes, which because of their value to the trade he had no difficulty in selling. While so engaged, he was again called upon by the Goodyear Company to undertake the perfection of a machine to sew the outer sole and the upper of a shoe while the shoe was on the last. He worked constantly on this problem for almost eight years and delivered in 1885 a complete machine, which used a curved needle and sewed a lock-stitch. This was followed by a straight-needle machine, patented Sept. 8, 1891 and delivered in 1892.

About 1895 he organized the Dancel Machine Company in Brooklyn, and before he died built a curved-needle machine to sew welts on the shoe with a lock-stitch while the shoe was on the last, the welt, upper, and in-sole being caught by one stroke of the needle. It was Dancel’s solution of the stitch-forming problems that made the Goodyear Welt System, now so widely used, a success. Incorporated in each one of his finished products were many devices for which patents were granted to him.

Besides his shoe-machine inventions, Dancel was co-patentee in machines for making barbed-wire fence, for skiving leather, for gaging and marking leather, for making leather buttonholes, for rubbing type, and for removing bristles from sealskins.

Achievements

• Dancel built the first practical machines for sewing turned shoes; a straight-needle machine. He devised and patented a welt-guide, and by adding it to the same machine, produced in 1874 one which would sew both turns and welts; delivered in 1885 a complete machine, which used a curved needle and sewed a lock-stitch; built a curved-needle machine. He organized the Dancel Machine Company.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Dictionary of American Biography

    (Dictionary of American Biography. 1,017 Pages.)

Connections

Dancel was married and had two children.