{"id":15420,"date":"2024-10-25T16:44:59","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T16:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=15420"},"modified":"2024-10-25T17:40:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T17:40:57","slug":"overlooked-no-more-margaret-e-knight-innovator-of-the-flat-bottomed-paper-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=15420","title":{"rendered":"Overlooked No More: Margaret E. Knight, Innovator of the Flat-Bottomed Paper Bag"},"content":{"rendered":"
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She came up with a method of automation so that workers would not have to make the bags by hand. Then she fought for credit for her work.<\/p>\n

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This article is part of <\/em>Overlooked<\/em><\/a>, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.<\/em><\/p>\n

The flat-bottomed paper bag is a marvel of quiet utility. It stands tall at the checkout counter of grocery stores ready to cradle the essentials of daily life \u2014 from fresh produce to a warm baguette, magazines or a carton of eggs. Billions of shoppers around the world carry them in their arms as they exit supermarkets and department stores.<\/p>\n

But it might not have been as ubiquitous today \u2014 so much more useful than the envelope-like paper bags that were commonly used before \u2014 were it not for the innovative mind of Margaret E. Knight, who was arguably the most successful female American inventor of the 19th century.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 1867, Knight was working as a bag bundler at the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Springfield, Mass., where she abhorred the cumbersome and time-consuming method of making every paper bag by hand. She sought a way to automate the process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cShe began to experiment with a machine that could feed, cut and fold the paper automatically and, most important, form the squared bottom of the bag,\u201d Henry Petroski<\/a>, a Duke University engineering professor and technology historian, wrote in American Scholar magazine in 2003. <\/p>\n

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She came up with a method of automation so that workers would not have to make the bags by hand. Then she fought for credit for her work.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.The flat-bottomed paper bag is a marvel of quiet utility. It stands tall at the checkout counter of grocery stores ready to cradle the essentials of daily life \u2014 from fresh produce to a warm baguette, magazines or a carton of eggs. Billions of shoppers around the world carry them in their arms as they exit supermarkets and department stores.But it might not have been as ubiquitous today \u2014 so much more useful than the envelope-like paper bags that were commonly used before \u2014 were it not for the innovative mind of Margaret E. Knight, who was arguably the most successful female American inventor of the 19th century.In 1867, Knight was working as a bag bundler at the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Springfield, Mass., where she abhorred the cumbersome and time-consuming method of making every paper bag by hand. She sought a way to automate the process.\u201cShe began to experiment with a machine that could feed, cut and fold the paper automatically and, most important, form the squared bottom of the bag,\u201d Henry Petroski, a Duke University engineering professor and technology historian, wrote in American Scholar magazine in 2003. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15422,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15420"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15423,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15420\/revisions\/15423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}