Margaret Knight (1838-1914) was the inventor of the flat-bottomed paper bag machine, seen in the photo below at the Charles River Museum of Industry in Waltham, MA (same place where Orient Bicycles were made). She received more than 80 patents during her lifetime, the first at the age of 30, for items such as a window frame and sash, improvements to internal combustion engines, machines to cut shoe soles, and machines to make paper bags. She founded the Eastern Paper Bag company in 1870. The machine below makes #5 candy bags at a rate of 40,000 per hour.
Just nice to acknowledge strong, smart, independent women from the past, who overcame far more sexism than we have to deal with.
