About Margaret E. Knight
Margaret Eloise Knight was an American inventor, notably of a machine to produce flat-bottomed paper bags. She has been called "the most famous 19th-century woman inventor". She founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company in 1870, creating paper bags for groceries similar in form to the ones that would be used in later generations. Knight received dozens of patents in different fields and became a symbol for women's empowerment. However, thinking to more fully automate the process, in 1868 Knight invented a machine that cut, folded, and glued paper to form the flat-bottomed brown paper bag familiar to shoppers today. Within weeks she invented a safety device for the loom, which was later adopted by other Manchester mills. For example, a patent was awarded to James Baldwin of Birmingham in 1853 for semi-mechanized apparatus to use in the making of flat-bottomed paper bags.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.