A MAN STOLE HER INVENTION. SHE TOOK HIM ON AND WON.

Margaret Knight knew machines.

She had been around them since childhood.

While still young, she worked in textile mills and later found herself working at the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Massachusetts.

At the time, making useful flat-bottomed paper bags involved slow manual work.

Margaret looked at the problem and thought:

There has to be a machine for this.

So she designed one.

Her machine could cut, fold and glue paper to create the familiar flat-bottomed paper bag.

But then things became interesting.

While a working model was being constructed, a man named Charles Annan saw Knight's design.

He tried to patent it himself.

Margaret Knight wasn't having it.

She challenged him through the patent system and produced drawings, notes, models, records and witnesses demonstrating that the invention was hers.

According to the Smithsonian, Annan even argued that a woman couldn't possibly understand enough mechanical complexity to design such a machine.

Margaret demonstrated otherwise.

She won.

Knight received her patent in 1871 and went on to become a prolific inventor, working on everything from manufacturing machinery to engines.

By the end of her life she held more than 20 patents.

There are plenty of stories about women whose achievements were credited to somebody else.

This one has a particularly satisfying ending.

She kept the invention.
She got the patent.
And history kept her name.

Women Who Built the Future — Steampunk Australia

Leading to Wrinkles in the Fabric with Dr Kathryn Spurling.

Because women's stories deserve to have the right names attached to them.

The Smithsonian documents Annan's attempt to claim Knight's paper-bag machine, the evidence she presented in the patent dispute and her eventual victory.