Margaret Knight

I scanned a packaging journal in my email inbox today. I was taken aback at the main image which appeared to be an intricate model of a familiar cylinder press. I did a Google search on the image and found that it was the model submitted with a 19th century patent application for a machine that folds flat bottomed paper bags (variants that are still in use today). Moreover, the inventor was a woman named Margaret Knight who was one of the first woman to be granted a US patent (on her way to almost 100 issued to her) and the model resides in the Smithsonian today. There are several videos that you can peruse on YouTube that reveal the breadth of her inventions. I wonder how much our presses borrowed or were inspired by her mechanical ideas? Pretty cool!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM0ewutCMQo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zOlnsj_WOQ

knightspaperbagmachine.jpg

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