Inventor. She was the daughter of James Knight and Hannah Teal. She was an employee at a paper mill in Springfield, Massachusetts when she constructed and invented a machine that produced flat bottom brown paper bags. Her design then was stolen by a machine shop foreman where she worked, and he patented it. Margaret Knight then enacted a successful patent interference lawsuit, and won her case by using the detailed notes, sketches and designs he created in developing the device, while the man who had stolen the idea used little more than a defense that a women could not have created such a machine. The patent was awarded to her in 1871, and she later founded and ran the Eastern Paper Bag Company. Between 1902 and 1915 she received patents for over twenty more devices she invented, and held eighty-seven patents when she died in 1914. in 2006 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Inventor. She was the daughter of James Knight and Hannah Teal. She was an employee at a paper mill in Springfield, Massachusetts when she constructed and invented a machine that produced flat bottom brown paper bags. Her design then was stolen by a machine shop foreman where she worked, and he patented it. Margaret Knight then enacted a successful patent interference lawsuit, and won her case by using the detailed notes, sketches and designs he created in developing the device, while the man who had stolen the idea used little more than a defense that a women could not have created such a machine. The patent was awarded to her in 1871, and she later founded and ran the Eastern Paper Bag Company. Between 1902 and 1915 she received patents for over twenty more devices she invented, and held eighty-seven patents when she died in 1914. in 2006 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Advertisement
See more Knight memorials in:
Explore more
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
