ABOUT PAPER BAGS (OR, WHAT MEN DON’T KNOW ABOUT WOMEN!)
COMPILED BY LUCY MANESS WARNER
AUGUST 27, 2016


CBS Saturday morning programming for young people (or simply for those who are interested in the world and how it works) “E/I” features Mo Rocca on Innovation Nation. This morning’s show featured one of the foremost female inventors Margaret Knight. She worked in a paper bag factory in Massachusetts, and had a brilliant idea. She designed a machine to fold and produce a paper bag that had a flat bottom, and therefore would sit on a flat surface. Instead of bringing your bag of apples into the kitchen and fighting to keep them all from tumbling out on the floor, you could simply set them down and go away to change clothes.

Not only did she invent the way to cut and glue the bag in a way that allowed the ends to fit together and stick in the well-known rectangular shape that we have today. She also designed a new modification to the machinery to perform those functions. An interloper named Charles Annan spied on the woman hired to make her prototype machine and, the dastard, proceeded to file for a patent in his own name. His argument included the statement that “a woman” couldn’t possibly design such an ingenious machine.

How foolish men can be. A feisty lady from Maine, she sued him and, by showing her design process and drawings, she proved him to be the liar and cheat that he was.

See her story below. See also the www.moma.org article which describes the technical information on how it all works. So what ever happened to Charles Annan? Not much, apparently. I can’t find even one listing for him on the Net except for two mentions under the subject of Margaret Knight. Justice is served.



http://www.women-inventors.com/Margaret-Knight.asp

Famous Women Inventors
Margaret Knight

Invention of the Paper Bag Machine

Margaret Knight

For many women inventors in years past, the invention process was twice as difficult because, in addition to the hardships of inventing, they also faced the skepticism of a world that didn't believe women could create something of value. Fortunately, over the years, that perception has been blown out of the water by women inventors like Margaret E. Knight, who were willing to fight for the accolades and recognition they unquestionably deserved.

Born in Maine in 1838 and raised by a widowed mother, Margaret Knight showed a proclivity toward inventing from a very young age – a characteristic of many of the world's famous inventors. After observing an accident at a textile mill at the age of 12, Margaret went to work producing her first real invention. Knight conceived a device that would automatically stop a machine if something got caught in it. By the time she was a teenager the invention was being used in the mills.

After the Civil war, Margaret Knight went to work in a Massachusetts paper bag plant. While working in the plant, Knight thought how much easier it would be to pack items in paper bags if the bottoms were flat (they were not at the time). That idea inspired Margaret to create the machine that would transform her into a famous woman inventor. Knight's machine automatically folded and glued paper-bag bottoms – creating the flat-bottom paper bags that are still used to this very day in most grocery stores.

Of course, no story of triumph would be complete without a villain. In this case, the villain was a man named Charles Annan – who attempted to steal Knight's idea (he spied on the woman hired to make her prototype) and receive credit for the patent. Not one to give in without a fight, Margaret took Annan to court to vie for the patent that rightfully belonged to her. While Annan argued simply that a woman could never design such an innovative machine, Knight displayed actual evidence that the invention indeed belonged to her. As a result, Margaret Knight received her patent in 1871.

Knight's invention immediately had a huge impact on the paper industry – and paper bags began to proliferate throughout the retail landscape. To this very day, thousands of machines based on Margaret Knight's idea are still used to produce flat-bottom paper bags. Knight didn't stop there though; throughout her lifetime she would receive over 20 patents and conceive almost 100 different inventions – including a rotary engine, shoe-cutting machine and a dress and skirt shield. At the time of her death, an obituary described Knight as a "woman Edison." In actuality, she was something greater – she was a woman inventor named Margaret Knight.

For more information on inventor Margaret Knight, refer to:

Paper Industry Hall of Fame Inductees – 2006
Biography of Margaret E. Knight
Patent model of Knight's machine for making paper bags, 1879



THE ORIGINAL SQUARE BOTTOM PAPER BAG MACHINE


http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blknight.htm

Margaret Knight (1838-1914)

Margaret Knight - Queen of Paper Bags

Margaret Knight was an employee in a paper bag factory when she invented a new machine part that would automatically fold and glue paper bags to create square bottoms for paper bags. Paper bags had been more like envelopes before. Workmen reportedly refused her advice when first installing the equipment because they mistakenly thought, "what does a woman know about machines?" Margaret Knight can be considered the mother of the grocery bag, she founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company in 1870.

Margaret Knight (Mattie) was born in 1838. She received her first patent at the age of 30, but inventing was always part of her life. Margaret or ‘Mattie’ as she was called in her childhood, made sleds and kites for her brothers while growing up in Maine. When she was just 12 years old, she had an idea for a stop-motion device that could be used in textile mills to shut down machinery, preventing workers from being injured.

Margaret Knight is considered one of "the female Edison," and received some 26 patents for such diverse items as a window frame and sash, machinery for cutting shoe soles, and improvements to internal combustion engines. Margaret Knight's paper bag machine made flat-bottomed paper bags that are still in use to this very day!

A few of Margaret Knight's other inventions:

• dress and skirt shield - 1883
• clasp for robes - 1884
• spit - 1885
• numbering machine - 1894
• window frame and sash - 1894
• rotary engine - 1902



http://www.handsonhemp.com/history-bags/plastic-paper-bags

A brief history of plastic & paper bags

When and why did people start using paper and plastic bags?

People switched away from using cloth bags when paper bags were invented. Paper bags allowed stores to provide a value added service to customers by giving out free paper bags which was supposed to make shopping easier and more convenient.

Later, when plastic bags were invented, stores switched to those because they were even cheaper than paper.

History of the 1st Paper Bags

•1852: First machine for making paper bags by Francis Wolle.
•1870: Invention of the first square bottom paper bag machine by Margaret Knight.
•1912: First paper shopping bag with handles

Margaret Knight's story is too interesting to leave out:

Margaret Knight invented a device to cut, fold and paste bag bottoms.

Before she could place the patent, a man named Charles Annan tried to steal and patent her idea after seeing her machine. Knight, 33 at the time, filed a patent interference suit against him.

His defense was that because Knight was a woman she could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities of the machine. But, due to her careful notes, diary entries, samples and expertise the court ruled in her favor.

Margaret Knight is considered the most famous 19th-century woman inventor and received 26 patents for such diverse items as a window frame and sash, machinery for cutting shoe soles, and improvements to internal combustion engines.



http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/11/03/in-the-bag

NOVEMBER 3, 2010 | COLLECTION & EXHIBITIONS, COUNTER SPACE
In the Bag
Posted by Aidan O’Connor, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design


The research subject: a brown paper bag. Simple, right? Nope.
After Counter Space opened, an AP reporter brought it to our attention that a reader was disputing the attribution of a brown paper bag on display in the exhibition. Our label recognized Charles Stilwell as the designer, noting a patent registered in 1883 to Union Paper Bag Machine Company. (Our bag, a modern example of this well-established form, was manufactured in 2005 by Duro Bag Manufacturing Co.) Sitting in the very first case in the gallery, alongside sugar cubes (developed in the early 1870s) and a Catharine Beecher drawing of a kitchen storage wall (1869), this bag was meant to represent standardization as an early defining feature of the modern kitchen. Because design attribution, especially for the Humble Masterpieces in our collection, can be a sticky pursuit, we fully acknowledged that our label might not tell the complete story of this familiar object, and took the AP query as a prompt to hit the primary sources (avoiding the mess of “histories” offered on so many websites). Since it’s actually pretty interesting, I thought I’d share with you some of the research that resulted, which we have since used to enrich our object file for this work, as well as to update our exhibition label.

Francis Wolle, active in the early 1850s, is considered the first inventor of the modern paper bag. Based in Pennsylvania, he cofounded the Union Paper Bag Machine Company in 1869, as well as becoming ordained as a deacon and following passions in entomology and botany. Union was supported financially by wealthy manufacturers, who thereby secured rights to patents secured by the company and divvied up the country into market segments to avoid direct competition. One of these characters was industrialist George West of Saratoga County, New York, also known as the “Paper Bag King.” Originally from England, he established himself in Ballston Spa, owned ten paper mills, and became a member of the New York State Assembly and the House of Representatives.

It was slightly later that a woman named Margaret Knight, working for another company, the Columbia Paper Bag Company of Springfield, MA, designed a machine that could produce flat/square-bottomed paper bags, a great improvement on the earlier, structurally weaker envelope-style bag design. As a result, it is Knight who is more widely recognized as the inventor of the paper bag in the general form of the one shown in Counter Space. She’s also believed to be the first woman to achieve a U.S. patent.

Engineer/professor/design historian Henry Petroski describes Knight’s “industrial origami” method in his book Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design (2003):

Knight’s machine worked by pulling from a roll of paper stock a sheet that it immediately started to form into a tube. Paste was applied where one side of the paper overlapped the other, thus completing the tube. Knight’s machine performed its greatest magic by shaping the end of the tube into a flat bottom by means of a series of three folds…the first fold formed the end of the tube into a slit diamond, the second creased the other tip over to form an elongated hexagon. With the proper pasting taking place simultaneously with the folding, the closed bottom was formed quickly. The bag was completed by being severed from the continuously forming tube, at which point the cycle was repeated.

However, our paper bag also reflects the design developments of the following years (starting around 1883) made by Charles Stilwell of Massachusetts/Pennsylvania (originally Fremont, Ohio), who improved on Knight’s machine to produce flat-bottomed paper bags—now with pleated sides for easier folding and stacking (satchel-style)—more quickly and cost-effectively. This type was given the nickname “S.O.S.” (self-opening-sack), and really provided the model for the mass-produced paper bags we know today.

The speed and scale of paper-bag production facilitated by Stilwell’s design was revolutionary for the industry. In The Growth of a Century (1894), for example, John A. Haddock describes the Paper Mill and Bag Factory of the Taggart Brothers’ Company in Watertown, NY: “In the bag-manufacturing room they have one machine that makes a bag with satchel-bottom, direct from the roll, at the rate of 3,600 finished bags per hour, completing with ease 25,000 fifty-pound flour sacks in ten hours. The use of this, the “Stilwell” machine, is limited to a very few mills. Mr. B. B. Taggart was one of the first to aid in developing the original device, and when he sold his interest in the machine at a round profit, he reserved the right to manufacture at his own mills. This very ingenious and complicated machine takes in paper at one end and turns out bags at the other with a rapidity that is astonishing.”

When Stilwell began working for the Union Paper Bag Machine Company in Philadelphia in the mid-1880s, he continued improving on his bag/machinery design. He went on to register several patents, one of which (from 1889) illustrates a bag nearly identical to the modern example by Duro.