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Valentine’s Day and
the Birthday of “the Queen of Paper Bags”
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For information on Valentine’s Day, see last year’s post.
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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.
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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.
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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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For Valentine’s Crafts and Recipes…
…check out Kaboose, DLTK, and Family Education.
