The sole man

Kicked off by a doubly punny title, this cheery historical episode pays tribute to a Surinamese American tinkerer who revolutionized the shoe-manufacturing industry. Keller retraces Jan Matzeliger's progress from his early years in Surinam to Lynn, Massachusetts, the "Shoe Capital of the World," where, overcoming the multiple obstacles of being a Black immigrant who spoke only Dutch, he found work in a factory where a skilled "laster" could turn out 20 to 30 pairs of shoes a week. Seeing room for improvement, he experimented for three years before cobbling together a device from scrap metal and cigar boxes that sped the process up to 700 pairs a day. Along with airy glimpses of nineteenth-century docks, workplaces, and antique gadgets, Costanza portrays the dapper inventor puzzling over his project, demonstrating it to a skeptical patent inspector, and posing proudly at the end, surrounded by a glowing cloud of colorful period footwear. A closing note ties the tale up neatly, filling in context and detail to underscore the scope of Matzeliger's achievement.