February 14, 2011


Valentine's Day and
the Birthday of “the Queen of Paper Bags”

For information on Valentine's Day, see last year's post


Margaret Knight is sometimes called “the female Edison” and is widely acknowledged as the most famous 19th-Century woman inventor. Her paper bag machine, which made flat-bottomed paper bags as opposed to the then-used envelope-type paper bags, prompted Knight to found the Eastern Paper Bag Company.

Born on this day in 1838, in Maine, Knight crafted sleds and kites for her brothers when she was just a kid and invented a injury-prevention device for textile mills when she was just 12 years old. She received 26 patents for such things as a rotary engine, a clasp for robes, a shoe-cutting machine, a window sash, and a numbering machine.

For more on Margaret Knight...
...including the story of how a man tried to steal the idea for her greatest invention, check out Famous Women Inventors




For Valentine's Crafts and Recipes...
...check out Kaboose,  DLTK,  and Family Education

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