Bag It

We are surrounded by things someone invented and hardly realize someone invented it. Take the flat bottom paper bag. Someone invented that? 

Yes. A woman invented it and wound up in the Inventors Hall of Fame and was the recent subject of an Overlooked No More NYT obituary, those occasional obits that are meant to be a sort of an atonement for ignoring the subject back when they should have received a tribute obit, if a tribute obit existed when they passed away—and if women were more recognized. These obits are always interesting. 

Margaret E. Knight lived from 1838-1914. I always try and think about what the deceased's world was like during their time on earth. 1838 puts Margaret squarely in the world of sailing ships, lots of candles, wars fought with horse pulled caissons, and horses as the best way to get from A to B. No tractors either. Mules or horses pulled plows. 

She was born in York, Maine, and was later brought up in Manchester, New Hampshire, and might have even known someone who fought in the American Revolution, and probably most likely someone who fought in the Civil War. And then of course there's the Spanish-American war. When she was born there were 26 stars in the flag, and Martin Van Buren was president. She read about Abraham Lincoln.

The bag above is on exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Margaret was installed in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio in 2006. She was working in a paper bag factory, making paper bags by hand, when she got the inspiration for making a machine that would make the paper bags, which at the time were really envelopes. No flat bottom sacks to hold the potatoes.

Anyone who's been to a store lately knows that paper bags are back. I get them at CVS, and my wife brings those tote bags (flat bottom) to the grocery store. No more plastic bags, which were great when we had an indoor cat and needed to scoop litter.

When the ruling came down that New York was going to outlaw plastic bags I started to hoard them so I had them for the cat. I kept a few trash bags full of them in the shed. Now the environmental pendulum has swung and paper's back and plastic is out. We're either saving the whales in Italy or trees everywhere. Go figure. 

Margaret in 1912

At an early age Margaret showed she wasn't going to be pigeon-hold into what girls were expected to do. She made her own wooden toys, sleds, and kites.  She told The Woman's Journal in 1872, "the only things I wanted were a jack knife, a gimlet and pieces of wood."  

She was no pushover. When a machine shop owner tried to claim  her invention of the machine that made flat bottom paper bags as his own, she took he guy to court. He claimed that a woman couldn't produce what she did.

But Margaret had the plans, original notebooks, etc. and the patent judge ruled in her favor. Justice prevailed, even for a woman in 1871. She received patent No. 116.842.

She successfully won other intellectual property cases. Her paper bag machine is in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

And lest if there is anyone at the NYT who currently feels that woman were never recognized for anything, they have only to read Glenn Rifkin's Overlooked obituary where he tells us that in 1913 the NYT did a story on the increasing number of woman among the ranks of inventors who singled out Ms. Knight as the oldest and "the one having most to her credit." She had been referred to as the female Thomas Edison. High praise indeed.

She remained single, and lived comfortably, but hardly in a state of wealth, having $300 to her name when she passed away.

Quite honestly, I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a free standing flat bottom paper bag and not think of Margaret Knight. Someone invented that.

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