In the late 1860s, Charles Annan patented a machine that would cut, fold, and glue flat-bottomed paper bags. Up to that point, paper bags had a downward wedge-shaped bottom, a design that was not only weak, but impractical.

Flat-bottomed bags existed, but they had to be made by hand and were not in wide production. So Annan’s patented machine was a big deal. It would revolutionize bag production. However, before he could reap the rewards of his patent, along came a woman who claimed she had invented the machine.

Margaret Knight, who was born in York, Maine and lived in Springfield, Massachusetts, waged a legal battle, trying to wrest the patent from Annan and claim it as her own.

In court, Annan was not prepared for the drubbing he would receive. Knight came armed with a powerful, $100-a-day patent attorney.

Knight produced abundant evidence that the invention was indeed hers. She brought in many witnesses who testified in her favor. The boss at the bag factory where she worked said that the idea for the machine originated in a conversation he’d had with Knight. He told the court there was no doubt the invention was hers.

A friend of Knight’s, Eliza McFarland, testified she had watched Knight make drawing after drawing of the machine, improving it with each one. Knight substantiated McFarland’s testimony by bringing in those drawings, as well as a model based on the designs.

A witness said that an early wooden model, though somewhat rickety, had cut and folded 1,000 bags.

Because a wooden prototype wasn’t good enough for a patent application, Knight had hired a mechanic to make an iron model based on her wooden one. The mechanic testified in her behalf.

Annan, it turned out, had visited the shop where the iron model was being made, had stolen the design, and patented it as his own.

(Supposedly, Annan’s defense in court was that no woman could have invented such an innovative and complex machine, particularly a woman with as little formal education as Knight. He is often quoted as having said this, but no one provides a documented source for the quote.)

The court decided in Knight’s favor, and a new patent – number 116842 – was awarded to the true inventor.

Up to that point, women who invented things would patent them using a man’s name. Or disguised their feminine names by using their first and middle initials.

Patent 116842 employs no such workarounds. At the top of the patent, in large letters, it says Margaret E. Knight, Bag Machine, patented July 11, 1871.

Anyone who has every used a paper bag to carry groceries from a store or a lunch to school, to make a puppet or a mask, to trick-or-treat with or eat popcorn from, to drain fried chicken, to dry herbs in or to collect recycling should thank Margaret Eloise Knight, of York, Maine.

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