The 19th-century woman behind a ubiquitous invention

“She faced numerous thefts of her intellectual property and legal challenges to her patents and designs, but she refused to back down.”

old photo of margaret knight, inventor.
Credit…Boston Sunday Post, via Newspaper Archive, via New York Times
It’s 1867. You are a single woman working as a bundler at the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Springfield, Mass. And you are tired.
Surely, you think, there is a better way to do this.  I know it…  and I’m going to build it.
You’re Margaret Knight, and in one year you will have developed one of the most useful inventions in American history. Your inventions will be stolen, dismissed, or credited to male peers. But you persist.

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