February 14 - Happy Birthday, Margaret Knight

       Posted on February 14, 2022

This is an update of my post published on February 14, 2011:


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




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