The Inventive Mind of Margaret E. Knight

Margaret E. Knight was an ingenious woman. She started tinkering with things when she was still just a tiny child, and the first invention that really improved the lives of those around her came about at the age of 12. 

Research:

• “A Lady in a Machine Shop.” Woman’s Journal, December 21, 1872. Accessed online: https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:48852547$409i
• Bedi, Joyce. “Margaret Knight.” Lemelson Center, Smithsonian. March 22, 2021. https://invention.si.edu/node/28532/p/609-margaret-knight
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Margaret E. Knight". Encyclopedia Britannica, 10 Feb. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margaret-E-Knight
• “Gained Fame as Inventor.” The Boston Globe. Oct. 13, 1914. https://www.newspapers.com/image/430883835/?terms=%22margaret%20e.%20knight%22%20&match=1
• “The Inspiring Story of Margaret E. Knight.” National Inventors Hall of Fame. https://www.invent.org/blog/inventors/margaret-e-knight-paper-pag
• Knight, M.E. “Clasp.” U.S. Patent Office. Oct. 14, 1884. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/1d/93/e6/029e560778fcd4/US306692.pdf
• Knight, Margaret E. “Bag Machine.” U.S. Patent Office. July 11, 1871. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/8b/67/0a/1fa1f5f32874bc/US116842.pdf
• Knight, M.E. “Improvement in Paper Bag Machine.” U.S. Patent Office. Oct. 28, 1879. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/bb/4b/1a/218335d174188c/US220925.pdf
• Knight, M.E. “Rotary Engine.” U.S. Patent Office. January 6, 1903. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/de/9a/87/cea123cb8ba55a/US717869.pdf
• Knight, M.E. “Skirt Protector.” U.S. Patent Office. Aug. 7, 1883. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/3a/cc/e8/cf6943b96a868f/US282646.pdf
• Knight, Margaret E. “Sole Cutting Machine.” U.S Patent Office. Sept. 16, 1890. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/19/16/34/0c57840da89f4c/US436358.pdf
• “Margaret E. Knight, ‘Woman Edison,’ Dead.” The Sun. Oct. 15, 1914. https://www.newspapers.com/image/145292345/?clipping_id=31861882
• “Patent Model for Paper Bag Machine.” Smithsonian – National Museum of American History. https://www.si.edu/object/patent-model-paper-bag-machine%3Anmah_214303
• “Patented By Women.” Pittsburgh Dispatch. April 10, 1892. https://www.newspapers.com/image/76571393/?terms=%22margaret%20e.%20knight%22%20&match=1
• PETROSKI, HENRY. “The Evolution of the Grocery Bag.” The American Scholar, vol. 72, no. 4, 2003, pp. 99–111. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41221195
• Sisson, Mary, and Doris Simonis, ed. “Inventors and Inventions.” Marshall Cavendish. 2007.
• Smith, Ryan P. “Meet the Female Inventor Behind Mass-Market Paper Bags.” Smithsonian. March 15, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/meet-female-inventor-behind-mass-market-paper-bags-180968469/
• “The Ames Manufacturing Company … “ Boston Evening Transcript. Oct. 17, 1873. https://www.newspapers.com/image/734890555/?terms=%22margaret%20e.%20knight%22%20&match=1
• “Women As Inventors.” The Philadelphia Times. April 10, 1892. https://www.newspapers.com/image/52506300/?terms=%22margaret%20e.%20knight%22%20&match=1
• “Women Who Are Inventors.” New York Times. October 19, 1913. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/10/19/100654443.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today we are
going to talk about a person who has been on
my radar for a while. She kicked up to the

(00:23):
top recently because she has shown up on a lot
of posts and reels about women the inventors for Women's
History Month, and particularly one of them. There was a
very well intentioned person making this reel, trying to call
out that we don't acknowledge all the contributions of women,
but they used the same image for her that is

(00:44):
misused almost ever reware and places that you would think
would know, we would know. Yeah, it cannot be her
because of timing. The woman in that picture is wearing
clothes that would not have existed until decades after Mark
Knight's death. We could talk a little bit more about
this on Friday. I really wanted to talk about her,

(01:08):
and it was a good reminder that we haven't. Because
Margaret E. Knight was a pretty ingenious lady. She started
tinkering with things when she was still really just a
little kid, and the first invention that really improved the
lives of those around her that she came up with
happened when she was the ripe old age of twelve
years old, in what to me sounds kind of like

(01:29):
a heartbreaking situation that inspired her. But she is primarily
known today for one admittedly important invention, but she created
a lot more things than that for her entire life.
So I just thought she was due for her moment,
so we're going to talk about her today. Margaret Eloise
Knight was born February fourteenth, eighteen thirty eight, in York, Maine.

(01:52):
Her parents were James and Hannah Teal Knight, and she
had two older brothers named Charlie and Jim. Margaret by Mattie,
and she showed a lot of ingenuity from a very
young age. She wasn't particularly interested in playing with things
like dolls, but she was interested in toys and made
them for her brothers. She also made them kites and sleds,

(02:15):
and apparently hers were very good. According to historian Henry
Petrotski in an article for American Scholar in two thousand
and three, a lot of other kids were envious of
her creations. Yeah, he got that information from a quote
by her which we'll have later. And when Margaret was
still very very young, her father James died and this

(02:36):
left the family with some pretty serious financial difficulties. So
her mother moved the family to Manchester, New Hampshire, where
there was a lot of millwork to be had, and
initially Hannah and Mattie's two older brothers went to work
to keep the family afloat, and then Mattie started working
full time in a cotton mill when she was just
twelve years old. So a quick textile brief. If you

(02:58):
look at a cut of wove fabric off of a bolt,
you'll see that the sides of the fabric are finished,
there's not a raw edge, and that's because on a
loom there are threads that run vertically, which are called
the warp, and then threads that run horizontally called the weft.
The weft threads are woven in and out of the
warp threads, and those warp threads are held tight on

(03:21):
the loom, so that woven thread rounds the last thread
and then makes a return trip back across the loom
in the opposite direction. That's how you have edges that
are already finished off and it's why there's no threads
hanging off the edge of the fabric. In the late
seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds, the power loom was developed,

(03:42):
and they still had to be worked by a machinist,
but that person was throwing a lever to make each
pass of the weft thread back and forth instead of
manually passing it back and forth using a needle or
some other tool. So, again, this is about woven fabric.
Knits are a bit different, and there are still people
who weave by hand. Obviously, we were talking about industrial weaving,

(04:07):
and mill looms were dangerous because those shuttles which carried
the weft threads that ran across the loom back and
forth had steel tips, and if there was even a
small error in handling them, or if the thread they
were carrying broke, those heavy shuttles with a steel tip
could shoot out of the machine and hit workers like

(04:28):
a projectile. And apparently Mattie saw this happen at least once,
where one of the other workers on the line with
her was very seriously injured. The specifics of that injury
don't really ever come up. I read one that suggested
that somebody lost their eye, or that it was even
worse than that. But I feel like we don't have
any evidence as to the actual thing that happened. She

(04:50):
probably saw something like this happen more than once, though
it may not have always been that critical in its injury.
But she immediately saw the problem that was going on
with these shuttles, so at the age of twelve, she
started working on a way to prevent such accidents. Soon,
just within a few weeks, she'd come up with a
restraining device for the shuttles, and it did exactly what

(05:13):
it was supposed to do. It kept the shuttle from
popping off of the loom in an unpredictable and fast trajectory.
And of course, this was a valuable advancement for cotton mills,
and Maddie's invention was quickly implemented, Its use started to spread,
and soon it was being used in mills all over Manchester.
In an ideal world, this would have led to Maddie

(05:35):
being compensated for what she'd invented. She had absolutely cut
a lot of costs and saved workers from injury, but
she was twelve, not from a wealthy or business savvy family.
She did not know she had an invention that she
could have patented. She kept working in the mill with
improved safety, but no financial gain from her invention. Yeah,

(05:59):
I mean the upside because it was never patented, it
got to be implemented in a lot of other places
very quickly without having to go through patent licensing. So
she probably saved a lot of lives as a consequence,
or at least a lot of people from injury. But
she should have been compensated. Unfortunately, though, because there was
no patent filed for Knight's invention, we actually today don't

(06:20):
exactly know how it worked. Historians kind of debate over
what it was. The two most obvious possibilities are that
it was either one some sort of physical apparatus that
actually blocked the shuttle so it could not pop out
of the loom, or to a mechanism that caused the
power loom to shut down or just stop if there
was a thread error. A New York Times write up

(06:43):
about Night from nineteen thirteen referred to this invention as
a quote covered shuttle, and that suggests either the first
of those two possibilities, or even possibly a third completely
different design that may have just rendered the shuttle mechanism
less dangerous if it were to leave the loom like
it may have had something that covered that steel tip
and made it a little bit softer and less dangerous.

(07:05):
When she was in her late teens, Maddie left the mill.
That may have been because of an issue with her
health that kept her from continuing to work in the mill.
She took a lot of odd jobs and other temporary
work for a while. Later, she credited this with giving
her a deeper understanding of how a lot of different
mechanical things worked. She spent time working in engraving shops

(07:26):
with photography equipment, and upholstery. For a while, she even
worked in a business that specialized in home repairs. Yeah,
I feel like even though she had very little formal education,
she got so much practical knowledge, and she absorbed so
much from everything she did that it kind of makes
sense that she was quite ingenious and able to apply
that information. Following the US Civil War in eighteen sixty seven,

(07:51):
Mattie moved away from the family and she found work
in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the Columbia Paper Bag Company. A
year into her work there, at the age of thirty,
she started on a new project. Just as she had
innovated the shuttle restraint for looms, Mattie once again came
up with a way to improve the work done on
the factory floor. This wasn't so much about safety, but

(08:12):
she spent a while tinkering with the way paper bags
were made. So any paper bag starts with a flat
sheet of paper, and it's then folded and usually glued
to hold its shape, and in the eighteen sixties this
created a paper bag that was flat with one end
folded and sealed, so it looked very much like a
big Manilla envelope. These kinds of bags flat bags still

(08:34):
exist today. Of course, you see them in places like
card shops all the time, but they were not and
are not ideal for every situation. They weren't even the
only kind of paper bag. People knew how to fold
bags that had flat bottoms, but no one had figured
out a way for a machine to make a flat
bottomed bag. They all had to be done by hand.

(08:54):
So obviously, anyone who's ever had takeout, or if you've
carried groceries or any other purchase, knows how much of
a game changer this would have been. Think of every
time you get a flat bottom shopping bag. And if
someone had handed you a bag that was flat across
and didn't have that stable bottom on it, how much
more of a pain in the neck it would be
to carry things. Margaret, though, thought more of the bag

(09:17):
folding process could be automated, so she started working on
a machine that would pull in the paper, cut it
to the shape that was needed, and folded. The pneumatic
paper feeding part of this invention was patented in eighteen
seventy as an improvement in paper feeding machines that on
its own was impressive. But Night continued her work on
paper feeders and automated bag folding, and in a move

(09:41):
that would cement her place among important inventors, she also
changed the shape of the bag that a machine could make,
so she created a machine that could produce a bag
with a flat, square bottom. So the function of this
machine was described by Petroski in that article that we
mentioned earlier, and it was described as follows quote. Knight's
machine worked by pulling from a roll of paper stock

(10:03):
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,
and the drawings that delineate the three step mechanical folding
process look like instructions for industrial or agami. The first

(10:27):
fold formed the end of the tube into a slit diamond,
the second creased one tip of the diamond over to
make a pentagon, and the third 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

(10:47):
the continuously forming tube, at which point the cycle was repeated. Also,
just as a side note in case you're trying to
make this picture in your head, this bag did not
have the fold in sides that we would associate with
like a paper grocery bag today that let you easily
flatten a bag for storage. That particular change to bags
was invented in eighteen seventy two and is attributed to

(11:08):
a man named Luther Crowell. Coming up, we will talk
about how a jerk tried to steal Margaret's invention. Before
we do, though, we will hear from some of the
sponsors that keep Stuffy Miss in history Glass going. This

(11:30):
whole process of developing this machine that could fold a
flat bottom bag had taken a long time. At one point,
Margaret has said to have spent so much of her
time watching the machines at the Columbia paper bag company
where she worked that her boss got irritated and thought
she was wasting time. But she told him what she
was doing and what she was working on, and surprisingly

(11:52):
and delightfully he supported it. Mattie was really methodical about
how she wanted to move forward with this new invention.
She had created a prototype machine out of wood, and
once she was confident that all of the mechanisms that
she had designed worked consistently, she reached out to a
machinist to make an iron version that would actually be
valuable in a factory setting. She wanted to make sure

(12:15):
that when she applied for her patent, she had a
sturdy and functional version of this bag holder to really
ensure that her patent request would be approved. So at
this point, Knight had achieved a level of savvy regarding
her inventions and their value, but she hadn't really considered
that once she shared this design, somebody else might try

(12:35):
to claim it as their own, and that's exactly what happened.
While her design was being produced by a Boston metalworker,
a man named Charles f Annon saw it, and he
quickly submitted a patent application for it in his own name.
To be clear, this was not the machinist she had
hired to do this work. According to one version of

(12:56):
the story, it was another one of his clients who
happen to spot it while visiting the shop. Annon is
said to have returned to the shop several times after
initially seeing Knight's bag machines, so that he could surreptitiously
get more information about it. There's also a version of
the story that says that Annon was also a machinist
who worked with the one that Margaret hired. It's really

(13:19):
not clear whether which of these two things is true,
if either of them. Whatever it was, though, he stole
her work and Mattie discovered Annon's theft of her idea
when she tried to submit her own patent application and
she was informed that the device she was filing a
patent for was already under application by Charles Annon. She
knew that he had used her designs and so she

(13:41):
sued him. This was not a small move on her part.
She is said to have paid a great deal of
money in legal costs by the time everything was over.
That amount is reported differently. In some it's listed as
one hundred dollars, in some it's one hundred dollars a day.
And this hearing took sixteen days, that would have been
sixteen hundred dollars, which was a lot of money at
the time. But regardless however much she spent, it was

(14:05):
worth it because when it came time for the hearing,
Maddie showed up ready to describe every single piece of
the machinery in question in detail. She had a raft
of physical evidence to support her claim, including her sketches
and her notes on the invention, information about her prototype,
as well as entries in her diaries about her work.
She also had her boss and landlady come in as

(14:28):
witnesses to corroborate that, yes, she worked with machinery all
the time and knew what she was doing and had
been working on this very project. On the other hand,
Annan showed up with nothing but the claim that a
woman simply could not understand machinery like his alleged invention.
But it was so evident to the courts that Margaret
knew exactly what she was talking about, and she won

(14:48):
the case, so she was able to go ahead with
her patent application and Annon's was withdrawn. The writing of
knights patent is very smart. It makes it clear that
this is just one way that the mechan is works,
and that she's patenting not the machine exactly, but the
mode of operation. This meant somebody else could not change
one little part of it and claim that as an improvement.

(15:10):
Her application concludes with quote, I wish to have it
understood that, believing myself to be the first to invent
a device to hold or push back a point or
portion of one edge of the paper tube while the
blade or tucking knife forms the first fold represented in Fig. Ten,
which is the basis of the flat bottom bag, I
do not confine myself to any particular form, position, or

(15:34):
mode of attaching the device referred to which I have
designated a guide finger, nor limit myself to making it
fixed or movable, as long as it performs the function
for which I have devised and used it. I have
made it in various forms and fixed as well as
movable and having a rear word projection like a heel.

(15:54):
The guide finger here and before described I believe to
be the best form, but other forms will end her
with the necessary modifications of the accompanying mechanism without altering
the principle of operation by which the fold represented in
figure ten four. I love that she was smart enough
to do that, like don't be coming along with your

(16:15):
with your eye moved the folding arm, and like claim
you changed my machine. The patent for her bag machine,
which was all it was called, was granted on July eleventh,
eighteen seventy one, and once Night had her patent in hand,
she needed capital if she was going to get a
manufacturing process for the invention up and running. She found

(16:36):
a business partner in Newton, Massachusetts who could finance her efforts,
and she co founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company. As
part of the founding of the new company, which was
based in Hartford, Connecticut, Maddie got an initial payout of
twenty five hundred dollars. She also got stock in the company,
and she collected royalties on sales, which were capped at
twenty five thousand dollars. So this was lucrative at the time,

(16:59):
and it probably like an awful lot of money to Margaret,
but it was a little bit shortsighted because once again
Night had perhaps not considered all of the variables in
the situation, and in this case, she didn't build in
ongoing income for herself from the company long term. She
knew that she didn't want to run a factory. She
had no interest in being a manager, so she wasn't

(17:20):
collecting any kind of salary, and those royalties, like we said,
were capped. It took a while for things to get
up and running. Of course. On October seventeenth, eighteen seventy three,
the Boston Evening Transcript ran a single sentence update that
signaled that things were about to get up and running
on that bag production front. It read, quote, the Aims
Manufacturing Company have just finished the paper bag machine, the

(17:43):
invention of Miss Margaret E. Knight of Ingleside. Yeah, so
that was presumably the company that was actually making all
of these multiple production machines at scale so that an
actual factory could begin. And once this was all up
and running, that new machine was a marvel for paper
bag companies, it meant that they had a much faster

(18:03):
way to produce stock than having employees handfold flat bottom bags,
so they had a vastly enlarged revenue stream. For grocers
and shops, and easier means of carrying purchases home meant
that shoppers were willing to buy more things, and for
department stores, it meant that clerks didn't need to wrap
goods for customers and tie them with twine. I read

(18:25):
one thing that said that Macy's was very quick to
adopt this because they were like time savor. The global
impact of Margaret Knight's invention was so great that she
was given a decoration of the Royal Legion of Honor
by Queen Victoria. Margaret was interviewed about her work for
Women's Journal in eighteen seventy two. That article opened by

(18:45):
explaining that initially, as the machines are being manufactured quote,
the workmen employed were at first skeptical, but she cured
them of this by going daily and working among them,
detecting mistakes and improving plans with a keener eye than
any man in the works. And when questioned about her
desire to work with machinery, from a young age. Margaret said, quote,

(19:06):
it is only following out nature. As a child, I
never cared for things that girls usually do. Dolls never
possessed any charms for me. I couldn't see the sense
of coddling bits of porcelain with senseless faces. The only
things I wanted were a jackknife, a gimlet, and pieces
of wood. I sighed sometimes because I was not like

(19:26):
the other girls, but wisely concluded that I could not
help it, and sought further consolation from my tools. I
would always make things for my brothers. Did they want
anything in the line of playthings, they always said, Mattie
will make them for us. I'm not surprised at what
I've done. I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as
good a chance as a boy and have been put
to my trade regularly. That write up concludes by saying

(19:50):
about Mattie quote, she can no more help making machinery
than Anna Dickinson can help making speeches. Following the launch
of the Eastern paper Bag Company, Knight decided she was
going to be an inventor full time. She kept an
office in Boston and lived outside the city, first in Ashland, Massachusetts,
which is about twenty eight miles west of Boston. Been
in Framingham, which is a little bit closer to Boston proper,

(20:13):
at about twenty two miles west of the city. Margaret
did not abandon the paper bag making business. She continued
to work on improvements to the machine's process. In eighteen
seventy nine, she was granted patent number twenty two nine
to two five for an updated version of her bag machine.
This update made changes to the folding blade and the

(20:33):
feeding blade to make the machine more reliable and even faster,
and the model that was submitted with that patent request
is now part of the collection of the National Museum
of American History. Coming up, we will talk about some
of Maddie's other inventions, but first we will pause for
a sponsor break. There's a bag folder is Margaret Knight's

(21:02):
most talked about invention. It's just one of many she
ventured into a lot of new areas. In eighteen eighty three,
she was granted a patent for a skirt protector. This
was essentially a raincoat to go over the large, bustled
and draped skirts of the day. It kind of like
was a raincoat that went from the waist down, and
the intention was to keep fine fabrics from being damaged

(21:23):
by inclement weather. Knight described her invention to me somewhat
quaintly as quote a shield which is capable of being
expanded to nearly a flat position for the reception of
the skirts, and then of being closed and held upon
the latter while being worn. In eighteen eighty four, she
was granted a patent for a new type of clasp.

(21:43):
The invention was, in the words of Knight's patent application,
quote an improved device for clasping one or more thicknesses
of robes or textile fabric for the purpose of holding
the same in any required position, either as a detached
clasp for uniting the otherwise the edges of said robe
or sheet of fabric, or as a means of attachment

(22:04):
from the end of a flexible connection to a fixed point,
or from said connection provided with means for securing its
other end. The illustration for this clasp and the document
is sort of fabulous that shows the clasp being used
to secure a blanket over the lap of a man
driving a carriage, and the clasp itself is really interesting.

(22:24):
It uses two circular spring loaded ends of a tethered mechanism,
and then they nestle inside one another. Once the fabric
is situated on top of one circular loop of the clasp,
the other one can be reduced in size enough to
fit over the fabric and then inside of the other
circular loop. Once the spring is released, the nestled loop

(22:46):
opens up wide enough that it can't pass back through
the other one. So think of this sort of as
like an embroidery hoop, if the smaller hoop was intended
to pass entirely through the larger one and then expand
out to the same size, so catching the fabric in
between them. I really really love this illustration because not
only does it show the man driving his carriage with

(23:08):
his blanket clasped on either side with this, but like
it even has like the horse hoofs drawn in with
like clouds of dust like pigpen around it. It's really
really fun. Another area of interest for Margaret was the
manufacture of shoes. In eighteen ninety, she was granted a
patent for a sole cutting machine, and this was a
design that carried sheets of rubber along a conveyor belt

(23:31):
that quote intermittently moves horizontally beneath a pattern and cutting
device which have a vertical reciprocating movement and intermittently descend.
Clamp the material upon the apron and cut out a
complete sole upon each of the tablets or beds while
it is at rest, and then once a shoe sole
was cut, the belt would just move along and take

(23:51):
away the shoe sole and the waist rubber. At the
end of the nineteenth century, Margaret turned her attention to
steam engines and Janey Wary of nineteen oh three, she
was granted a patent on her rotary engine. She explained
its function as follows quote. The improvements relate particularly to
the construction and arrangement of pistons and their abutments for

(24:12):
rotary engines, either single acting or compound, and the combination
of two or more pistons in a manner to obviate
vibration of the engine when in operation. And the invention
consists in hanging a plurality of pistons upon bearings eccentric
to the center of the piston chamber. When two pistons
are used, they are arranged with their eccentricity diametrically opposite

(24:36):
to each other, and when three are used. The two
end pistons are hung with the eccentricity diametrically opposed to
the middle position, and the steam pressure area of the
middle piston and its centrifugal force when in motion should
be substantially equal to that of the two end pistons.
The invention further consists in making the so called steam

(24:57):
abutment of a plate of metal and attaching its upper
edge securely to the engine casting above the cylinder, while
the lower edge projects downward into a slot formed in
each piston, in which it slides as the pistons revolve
around their eccentric bearings about the engine shaft. This engine
was intended to run things like the various machines she

(25:18):
had invented in her career. Yeah, so, taking away less
of a need for mill workers and enabling them to
have just an easier time of running the various machines
that she had created. In nineteen thirteen, an article that
was titled Women who are Inventors appeared in the New

(25:39):
York Times, and although it covered the achievements of multiple women,
Night was important enough that the subtitle called out only
her by name, reading, Miss Margaret E. Knight is now
at work on her eighty ninth invention, and other women
who have shown inventive genius. The section from the article
that's about Margaret opens with quote, the oldest of them

(26:00):
and the one having the most to her credit, is
Miss Margaret E. Knight, who, at the age of seventy
is working twenty hours a day on her eighty ninth invention.
And it goes on to tell the story of her
early cotton mill days and how her bag folding machine
brought her accolades from the British crown. As Night's name
became synonymous with invention, it was also increasingly associated with

(26:21):
something else entirely, and that was the early women's equality movement.
As the nineteenth century came to a close in the
twentieth century began, Margaret's name was frequently invoked in articles
that showcased the accomplishments of women as a way to
make the case for equality. Based on her eighteen seventy
two article quote we mentioned earlier, it's clear that she

(26:42):
felt that women and girls should be given the same
opportunities as men. Obviously, the time when that binary structure
was the only way that those kinds of discussions were
really framed but none of the later articles that used
her as an example of the ingenuity of women were
at her and they didn't include quotes from her, so

(27:03):
we don't really know how she felt about it. Yeah,
her actual thoughts on the movement itself are kind of
a mystery. On October twelfth, nineteen fourteen, Margaret died at
the age of seventy eight in Framingham Hospital. Her obituary
mentioned that her death came quote following an illness of
several weeks of a complication of diseases, which is pretty nebulous.

(27:24):
We don't really know the cause of death. She had
been working right up to the end of her life,
continuing to spend long hours in her workshop, which seemed
to be exactly where she wanted to be. When Margaret
Knight died, her obituaries honored her achievements, but they've also
caused some problems in terms of the historical record. For one,
a lot of them claim she was the first woman

(27:46):
to receive a US patent, and this is untrue. Although
she may have been the first woman to have her
portrait exhibited in the US Patent Office, do we have
this portrait? We do not, Okay, that's why it's maybe
people have referenced it in other writings, but I don't know. Yeah,
I had this moment of like, why don't we know
what it looks like. Some obituaries stated that she held

(28:09):
eighty seven patents, which is also untrue, although she probably
had that many inventions under her belt, just not necessarily
patenting all of them. What's true is that at the
end of her life Margaret Knight held twenty seven patents.
She had changed the retail world with her bag folder
when she was barely in her thirties, and she made

(28:30):
a life for herself working solely as an inventor when
that was really a career path that was almost unheard
of for a woman. She is often noted as having
died with less than three hundred dollars to her name,
as sort of a sad coda to her life story, like, oh,
she died destitute, but in nineteen fourteen, that wasn't exactly

(28:50):
living destitute. By relative worth calculations, it would have been
more than nine thousand dollars today. So she didn't have
a huge fortune. No, but she was, and she had
supported herself by patenting her inventions and then selling those
patents and then being paid royalties on their use. She
never married or had children, so she didn't need to
leave a financial legacy to support anybody else. For someone

(29:13):
who had started life incredibly poor and had had to
work a full time job as a child just so
her family could eat, you didn't make the cases. She
had really achieved quite a lot in being financially independent
and just able to live as she wished. In two
thousand and six, Margaret Knight was posthumously inducted into the
National Inventors Hall of Fame. I wish I knew more

(29:35):
about her personality. That's my family. We don't have a
lot of that. Yeah. I have such a fun listener mail.
Oh good, oh, I love this one. This is from
our listener Liz, who says I made my family go
see the Amazon Rainforest carousel at the Philadelphia Zoo and
also the animals. Liz writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy. Recently

(29:58):
some friends of me and my husban been reminded us
that we could still be social in the winter. We
agreed and set a date to bring our kids up
to visit, with no particular plan in place. Then I
listened to an older Saturday classic, The History of carousels,
and these friends live near Philadelphia, so naturally I texted
them immediately and said, we're going to the zoo. We
packed up our car and our three kids, all under three,

(30:20):
and drove two hours from Central Pennsylvania to Philadelphia. I
told the kids it was to see the zoo. It
kind of was, but it was to see the carousel.
The zoo itself is an interesting place. They're very proud
of the fact that they are considered the first zoo
in the US. There are parts that definitely feel older
and definitely more like people were guessing what animals needed,
which I guess they were. There are different kinds of

(30:43):
really cool birds where there might have been larger animals
one hundred years ago. I'm sure if I really wanted to,
I could look into that more, but I think it
would just make me sad. Way, do I understand that sentiment.
I've attached pictures for tax I took a lot of
pictures of the carousel while also trying to hold one
of my kiddos for safety. The rest are some of
the animals we saw, though many were inside because it

(31:03):
was cold. I do love that the zoo celebrated the
snapping turtle's birthday by putting stickers up. I guess he
doesn't move that much because those stickers were on the
outside of the tank. They had four Galapagos tortoises, but
this big boy pictured was huge. Sorry for the long email,
but I just wanted to share how fun it was
to bring my family to a piece of history I
only knew about because the pod. I love the pod

(31:24):
and the knowledge and perspective you guys bring. I'm eager
to share it with my kiddos when they're a bit older.
Right now, it's wheels on the bus or bust. I'm
afraid it was a long two hour drive, Liz, I
love everything about this email. One. I just love that
you were like, we're going to see that carousel. Two
the pictures of this carousel are so beautiful. By the way,

(31:47):
to explain the reference of the tortoise and the stickers,
they put up like stickers that look like a birthday
hat and a gift, And if the tortoise is standing
in just the right position, it looks like he's wearing
the hat and the gift. And apparently he moves so
little that it was safe to put up stationary stickers
that he will often look like he is wearing the
hat and receiving the gift, which I love. This carousel

(32:10):
is so beautiful and I have honestly not seen very
many pictures of it, so this was a real treat.
Like you can see clearly that there's like a beautiful
snake carved into it in one place, and like there
are there's so much foliage, and there are paintings of animals,
and it's just a really, really beautiful thing. And I
cannot tell you how much I appreciate that you took
the time to take all of these photographs and share

(32:32):
them with us, as well as sharing some very cute
animals from the zoo. I'm still laughing about the tortoise
because he really does look very funny. There's a great
rhino picture. I love a rhinosiris, and of course one
of the best of the wild animals, the red panda,
which I think everyone wishes we could all just have
one as a pet, right we all wish that. No,

(32:57):
this is absolutely gorgeous, and I love that you are
going on little history field trips. It makes me so
happy in my dark little heart. So thank you, thank you,
thank you for sending us this email. If you would
like to write to us, you can do so at
History Podcast at iHeartRadio. You can also find us on
social media as missed in History and if you have
not yet subscribed to the podcast and want to so

(33:17):
you don't miss out on a single new or old
episode as we release classics and maybe get inspired to
go travel somewhere, you could do that on the iHeartRadio
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you Missed in History class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(33:41):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,