Mario Maccaferri
Mastro Industries, Inc
Inducted 1996
Mario Maccaferri (1900 – 1993) was a musician, inventor, and entrepreneur who pioneered several plastics markets and technologies, often combining plastics and music. For example, he developed a plastic reed to replace cane reeds in wind instruments. He also invented several non-musical plastic products as well as plastic machinery.
Born in Cento, Italy, Maccaferri was trained as a classical guitarist and in 1926, became a professor at the Conservatory of Music in Sienna. His concert career continued until he sustained a hand injury in 1932. At the same time, he had developed a second career designing and manufacturing musical instruments. He founded the French-American Reed Company in Paris in 1933 and moved the firm to New York City in 1939. Soon after, he developed a plastic reed to replace cane reeds in wind instruments. The high-quality plastic reeds became very popular, and early users included Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Jimmy Dorsey.
Maccaferri’s next invention was the injection-molded clothespin, the success of which led him to found Mastro Industries, Inc., a custom injection molding corporation that at its height employed 300 people, operated 28 injection molding machines, and provided services from engineering and mold-making, product assembly, finishing, and packaging.
This manufacturing experience led to Maccaferri’s invention of the Uniform Melt Extractor, the forerunner to today’s injection molding plasticating unit. Mastro was the largest manufacturer of injection molded kitchen and bathroom wall tiles. Maccaferri also developed and manufactured the plastic ukulele, shipping over nine million of them between 1949 and 1958, and developed other plastic musical instruments, including guitars, banjos, drum sets, trumpets, and saxophones.
In the 1960s, Maccaferri was part of a team that developed and designed a new form of music media: the eight-track audio cartridges. One of his latest inventions was the first full-scale, professional-quality plastic violin. It was used in a Carnegie Hall recital in 1990.
Areas of Expertise:
Plastics machinery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Maccaferri
https://www.frenchamericanreeds.com/mario