Margaret E. Knight--inventor paper bag machine, amoung others
Margaret Knight
Invention of the Paper Bag Machine
Margaret Knight
For many women inventors in years past, the invention process was twice as difficult because, in addition to the hardships of inventing, they also faced the skepticism of a world that didn't believe women could create something of value. Fortunately, over the years, that perception has been blown out of the water by women inventors like Margaret E. Knight, who were willing to fight for the accolades and recognition they unquestionably deserved. Born in Maine in 1838 and raised by a widowed mother, Margaret Knight showed a proclivity toward inventing from a very young age – a characteristic of many of the world's famous inventors. After observing an accident at a textile mill at the age of 12, Margaret went to work producing her first real invention. Knight conceived a device that would automatically stop a machine if something got caught in it. By the time she was a teenager the invention was being used in the mills.
After the Civil war, Margaret Knight went to work in a Massachusetts paper bag plant. While working in the plant, Knight thought how much easier it would be to pack items in paper bags if the bottoms were flat (they were not at the time). That idea inspired Margaret to create the machine that would transform her into a famous woman inventor. Knight's machine automatically folded and glued paper-bag bottoms – creating the flat-bottom paper bags that are still used to this very day in most grocery stores.
Of course, no story of triumph would be complete without a villain. In this case, the villain was a man named Charles Annan – who attempted to steal Knight's idea (he spied on the woman hired to make her prototype) and receive credit for the patent. Not one to give in without a fight, Margaret took Annan to court to vie for the patent that rightfully belonged to her. While Annan argued simply that a woman could never design such an innovative machine, Knight displayed actual evidence that the invention indeed belonged to her. As a result, Margaret Knight received her patent in 1871.
Knight's invention immediately had a huge impact on the paper industry – and paper bags began to proliferate throughout the retail landscape. To this very day, thousands of machines based on Margaret Knight's idea are still used to produce flat-bottom paper bags. Knight didn't stop there though; throughout her lifetime she would receive over 20 patents and conceive almost 100 different inventions – including a rotary engine, shoe-cutting machine and a dress and skirt shield. At the time of her death, an obituary described Knight as a "woman Edison." In actuality, she was something greater – she was a woman inventor named Margaret Knight.
http://www.women-inventors.com/Margaret-Knight.asp
Margaret E. Knight (1838-1914)
margaret knight's paper bag machine
Ask about the role of American women in the 19th century Industrial Revolution, and you may be told of women who worked in the New England textile mills. But the story does not end there. Fascinated by tools and machinery, Margaret E. Knight applied her natural creative genius while working at various factories to invent devices that improved productivity and saved lives. Knight was fortunate that her family allowed her to pursue these unconventional interests during her childhood in Maine. Knight received little schooling and never traveled out of northern New England, instead joining her brothers in factory work.
Before electricity, manufacturers built their facilities along rapidly flowing water, preferably waterfalls, which provided the energy to turn the waterwheels that powered the belts that turned the wheels inside the factory In Knight's time, mills expanded from producing lumber and processing grains to manufacturing many types of goods, such as fabric and shoes which families formerly made completely and tediously by hand. Knight's New England was soon was dotted with textile mills and shoe manufacturers.
While it was water that powered factory machinery, it was women who ran those machines - almost all of them young. Scratching out a living from rocky soil in a cold climate always had been difficult, and countless families sent their teenage daughters to work in the new factories. Often these daughters earned more cash money than their fathers and brothers who remained on the farm. While Knight was one of these factory girls, she was different from most with her keen eye and mind for inventions. She reportedly made her first invention at age twelve, when she saw a shuttle fly from a machine and injure a worker in Manchester, New Hampshire. These accidents were not uncommon, and young Knight solved the problem in that factory by creating a stop-motion device. She was too young and her family too uneducated, however, to patent the idea and make money from its resale.
That was in 1850; it was not until 1870 that Knight finally applied for her first patent - and then she had to fight for it. She was working during the late 1860s for a paper bag manufacturer in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her keen mechanical mind envisioned a machine that could do the necessary folding of square-bottom paper bags, the kind of bag that still is used today. Knight built a wooden model of her creative folding device and took it to Boston to be cast into iron. There a man, Charles Annan, saw her work and stole her idea: when, a few months later, she perfected the machine and applied for its patent, his was already on file. The Patent Office investigated the Knight vs. Annan dispute, and in a rare victory for women in that era, issued the patent to her.
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https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/margaret-knight/
Margaret Knight
The cars are nice. The cell phones cool. Electricity, indeed, helps us get things done. But where would we be without the foldable, flat-bottomed bag? A hundred and fifty years ago you had to bring your own bag, take stuff home in a rolled up cone of paper, or use one of the inefficient mass-produced envelopes that passed for bags—glued at the bottom in a V-shape. The flat-bottomed paper bags that were in use were made individually, by hand. And re-using one at the grocery store would not earn you back a nickel. Margaret Knight was one of the first women to receive a patent, most notably for her invention of the flat-bottomed paper bag machine. Yes, today's children owe their brown paper puppets, and cheap BANGs to Margaret "Mattie" Knight (1838 – 1914).
But long before she turned her mind to the personal transportation of small goods, Knight was visiting the cotton mill where her brothers worked as overseers. One day she saw a shuttle break free from its spool of thread and stab a young boy, a fairly common occurrence, apparently. Knight, having had some experience cobbling together kites and sleds, decided to end the shuttle's danger and devised a device (the details of which are lost to history) to prevent such accidents. She was 12 and knew nothing, yet, of patents and lawsuits. The device was adopted by cotton mills throughout the country, but Knight did not profit from her work.
Knight later left her family in New Hampshire for a job with the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Springfield, MA. Presumably stupefied by the slowness of the manual process required to assemble flat-bottomed bags, Knight began toying with the idea of a machine that would make them. Within a month she had a sketch of one, and within half a year she had a working wooden model that would cut, fold, and glue the bags together with the turn of a crank. Though "rickety" as described by a witness later in the courts, it pumped out more than 1,000 bags. Knight took the model to a local shop and, working closely with the machinist, put together an iron prototype. She then moved to Boston to refine the invention with two machinists. While work proceeded at the second of the shops, another machinist, Charles Anan, stopped by to examine the proceedings, with Knight's permission. When, some months later, Knight filed for her patent for the now complete flat-bottom-bag-making machine, she was surprised to find her application rejected. A patent for such a machine had already been granted to one Charles Anan.
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After making the machine, she formed the Easter Paper Bag Company. But before long she had turned her mind to other manufacturing problems. She created a machine for cutting the soles of shoes, a sewing machine reel, a pronged spit, a paper-feeding machine, an "automatic tool for boring concave or cylindrical surfaces," a numbering mechanism, a skirt protector, and a sleeve-valve engine, among many other inventions. Knight, "at the age of seventy, is working twenty hours a day on her 89th invention," reported the New York Times on October, 19, 1913. The next year she would be dead, leaving behind an estate valued at $275.05.
https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/diversity/margaret-knight
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