Shoes have evolved significantly over thousands of years. The oldest known shoes date back to 3,500 BC and were simple leather sandals. During the 19th century, machinery was developed to automate shoe production, replacing handcrafted techniques. Today, shoes are mass produced using synthetic materials and are often made with little real leather. Some companies now collect and recycle old shoes to reduce environmental impacts from production and disposal.

1. Shoes For my inquiry I am doing the history of shoes and how they impact on the natural world.

7. Tools in shoe making Efforts had been made to develop machinery for shoe production. They had all failed and it remained for the shoemakers of the United States to create the first successful machinery for making shoes. In 1845 the first machine to find a permanent place in the shoe industry came into use. It was the Rolling Machine, which replaced the lapstone and hammer previously used by hand shoemakers for pounding sole leather, a method of increasing wear by compacting the fibres. This was followed in 1846 by Elias Howe's invention of the sewing machine. The success of this major invention seems to have set up a chain reaction of research and development that has gone on ever since. Today there are no major operations left in shoemaking that are not done better by machinery than formerly by hand.