Margaret Knight was an American inventor. To help support her family, Margaret worked in the mills. It was in the mills that Margaret witnessed a horrible accident and began to work on how to prevent such dangers. Margaret created a stop-motion device that would leave the loom inoperable if there was a malfunction, preventing parts from flying off and harming people. She did not have the money or experience to patent the part and never made any money from her invention.
In the 1860s while working for The Columbia Paper Bag Company, Margaret noted that the process to make paper bags was both inefficient and yielded a bad product. Margaret began working on a machine that could automatically cut, fold, and glue the bags together by turning a crank. She started with a wooden model but then took it to Boston to have it cast into iron and improve on it. However, at the machine shop a man stole her idea and applied for a patent for it. Although she didn’t have much money, Margaret sued the man for stealing her idea and won! She formed the Easter Paper Bag Company and received the patent for the machine in 1871.