{"id":7341,"date":"2026-09-03T12:11:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T02:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/?p=7341"},"modified":"2026-09-03T12:12:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T02:12:48","slug":"margaret-knight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/women-who-built-the-future\/margaret-knight\/","title":{"rendered":"MARGARET KNIGHT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>A MAN STOLE HER INVENTION. SHE TOOK HIM ON AND WON.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Margaret Knight knew machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She had been around them since childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While still young, she worked in textile mills and later found herself working at the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time, making useful flat-bottomed paper bags involved slow manual work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Margaret looked at the problem and thought:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>There has to be a machine for this.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So she designed one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her machine could cut, fold and glue paper to create the familiar <strong>flat-bottomed paper bag<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But then things became interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While a working model was being constructed, a man named <strong>Charles Annan saw Knight's design<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He tried to patent it himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Margaret Knight wasn't having it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She challenged him through the patent system and produced drawings, notes, models, records and witnesses demonstrating that the invention was hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the Smithsonian, Annan even argued that a woman couldn't possibly understand enough mechanical complexity to design such a machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Margaret demonstrated otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>She won.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Knight received her patent in 1871 and went on to become a prolific inventor, working on everything from manufacturing machinery to engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the end of her life she held <strong>more than 20 patents<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are plenty of stories about women whose achievements were credited to somebody else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This one has a particularly satisfying ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>She kept the invention.<br>She got the patent.<br>And history kept her name.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Women Who Built the Future \u2014 Steampunk Australia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leading to <strong>Wrinkles in the Fabric with Dr Kathryn Spurling<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because women's stories deserve to have the right names attached to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Someone tried to steal her invention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-women-who-built-the-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7346,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341\/revisions\/7346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}