Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about a person who has been on
Speaker 1: my radar for a while. She kicked up to the
Speaker 1: top recently because she has shown up on a lot
Speaker 1: of posts and reels about women the inventors for Women's
Speaker 1: History Month, and particularly one of them. There was a
Speaker 1: very well intentioned person making this reel, trying to call
Speaker 1: out that we don't acknowledge all the contributions of women,
Speaker 1: but they used the same image for her that is
Speaker 1: misused almost ever reware and places that you would think
Speaker 1: would know, we would know. Yeah, it cannot be her
Speaker 1: because of timing. The woman in that picture is wearing
Speaker 1: clothes that would not have existed until decades after Mark
Speaker 1: Knight's death. We could talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: this on Friday. I really wanted to talk about her,
Speaker 1: and it was a good reminder that we haven't. Because
Speaker 1: Margaret E. Knight was a pretty ingenious lady. She started
Speaker 1: tinkering with things when she was still really just a
Speaker 1: little kid, and the first invention that really improved the
Speaker 1: lives of those around her that she came up with
Speaker 1: happened when she was the ripe old age of twelve
Speaker 1: years old, in what to me sounds kind of like
Speaker 1: a heartbreaking situation that inspired her. But she is primarily
Speaker 1: known today for one admittedly important invention, but she created
Speaker 1: a lot more things than that for her entire life.
Speaker 1: So I just thought she was due for her moment,
Speaker 1: so we're going to talk about her today. Margaret Eloise
Speaker 1: Knight was born February fourteenth, eighteen thirty eight, in York, Maine.
Speaker 1: Her parents were James and Hannah Teal Knight, and she
Speaker 1: had two older brothers named Charlie and Jim. Margaret by Mattie,
Speaker 1: and she showed a lot of ingenuity from a very
Speaker 1: young age. She wasn't particularly interested in playing with things
Speaker 1: like dolls, but she was interested in toys and made
Speaker 1: them for her brothers. She also made them kites and sleds,
Speaker 1: and apparently hers were very good. According to historian Henry
Speaker 1: Petrotski in an article for American Scholar in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, a lot of other kids were envious of
Speaker 1: her creations. Yeah, he got that information from a quote
Speaker 1: by her which we'll have later. And when Margaret was
Speaker 1: still very very young, her father James died and this
Speaker 1: left the family with some pretty serious financial difficulties. So
Speaker 1: her mother moved the family to Manchester, New Hampshire, where
Speaker 1: there was a lot of millwork to be had, and
Speaker 1: initially Hannah and Mattie's two older brothers went to work
Speaker 1: to keep the family afloat, and then Mattie started working
Speaker 1: full time in a cotton mill when she was just
Speaker 1: twelve years old. So a quick textile brief. If you
Speaker 1: look at a cut of wove fabric off of a bolt,
Speaker 1: you'll see that the sides of the fabric are finished,
Speaker 1: there's not a raw edge, and that's because on a
Speaker 1: loom there are threads that run vertically, which are called
Speaker 1: the warp, and then threads that run horizontally called the weft.
Speaker 1: The weft threads are woven in and out of the
Speaker 1: warp threads, and those warp threads are held tight on
Speaker 1: the loom, so that woven thread rounds the last thread
Speaker 1: and then makes a return trip back across the loom
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction. That's how you have edges that
Speaker 1: are already finished off and it's why there's no threads
Speaker 1: hanging off the edge of the fabric. In the late
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds, the power loom was developed,
Speaker 1: and they still had to be worked by a machinist,
Speaker 1: but that person was throwing a lever to make each
Speaker 1: pass of the weft thread back and forth instead of
Speaker 1: manually passing it back and forth using a needle or
Speaker 1: some other tool. So, again, this is about woven fabric.
Speaker 1: Knits are a bit different, and there are still people
Speaker 1: who weave by hand. Obviously, we were talking about industrial weaving,
Speaker 1: and mill looms were dangerous because those shuttles which carried
Speaker 1: the weft threads that ran across the loom back and
Speaker 1: forth had steel tips, and if there was even a
Speaker 1: small error in handling them, or if the thread they
Speaker 1: were carrying broke, those heavy shuttles with a steel tip
Speaker 1: could shoot out of the machine and hit workers like
Speaker 1: a projectile. And apparently Mattie saw this happen at least once,
Speaker 1: where one of the other workers on the line with
Speaker 1: her was very seriously injured. The specifics of that injury
Speaker 1: don't really ever come up. I read one that suggested
Speaker 1: that somebody lost their eye, or that it was even
Speaker 1: worse than that. But I feel like we don't have
Speaker 1: any evidence as to the actual thing that happened. She
Speaker 1: probably saw something like this happen more than once, though
Speaker 1: it may not have always been that critical in its injury.
Speaker 1: But she immediately saw the problem that was going on
Speaker 1: with these shuttles, so at the age of twelve, she
Speaker 1: started working on a way to prevent such accidents. Soon,
Speaker 1: just within a few weeks, she'd come up with a
Speaker 1: restraining device for the shuttles, and it did exactly what
Speaker 1: it was supposed to do. It kept the shuttle from
Speaker 1: popping off of the loom in an unpredictable and fast trajectory.
Speaker 1: And of course, this was a valuable advancement for cotton mills,
Speaker 1: and Maddie's invention was quickly implemented, Its use started to spread,
Speaker 1: and soon it was being used in mills all over Manchester.
Speaker 1: In an ideal world, this would have led to Maddie
Speaker 1: being compensated for what she'd invented. She had absolutely cut
Speaker 1: a lot of costs and saved workers from injury, but
Speaker 1: she was twelve, not from a wealthy or business savvy family.
Speaker 1: She did not know she had an invention that she
Speaker 1: could have patented. She kept working in the mill with
Speaker 1: improved safety, but no financial gain from her invention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the upside because it was never patented, it
Speaker 1: got to be implemented in a lot of other places
Speaker 1: very quickly without having to go through patent licensing. So
Speaker 1: she probably saved a lot of lives as a consequence,
Speaker 1: or at least a lot of people from injury. But
Speaker 1: she should have been compensated. Unfortunately, though, because there was
Speaker 1: no patent filed for Knight's invention, we actually today don't
Speaker 1: exactly know how it worked. Historians kind of debate over
Speaker 1: what it was. The two most obvious possibilities are that
Speaker 1: it was either one some sort of physical apparatus that
Speaker 1: actually blocked the shuttle so it could not pop out
Speaker 1: of the loom, or to a mechanism that caused the
Speaker 1: power loom to shut down or just stop if there
Speaker 1: was a thread error. A New York Times write up
Speaker 1: about Night from nineteen thirteen referred to this invention as
Speaker 1: a quote covered shuttle, and that suggests either the first
Speaker 1: of those two possibilities, or even possibly a third completely
Speaker 1: different design that may have just rendered the shuttle mechanism
Speaker 1: less dangerous if it were to leave the loom like
Speaker 1: it may have had something that covered that steel tip
Speaker 1: and made it a little bit softer and less dangerous.
Speaker 1: When she was in her late teens, Maddie left the mill.
Speaker 1: That may have been because of an issue with her
Speaker 1: health that kept her from continuing to work in the mill.
Speaker 1: She took a lot of odd jobs and other temporary
Speaker 1: work for a while. Later, she credited this with giving
Speaker 1: her a deeper understanding of how a lot of different
Speaker 1: mechanical things worked. She spent time working in engraving shops
Speaker 1: with photography equipment, and upholstery. For a while, she even
Speaker 1: worked in a business that specialized in home repairs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like even though she had very little formal education,
Speaker 1: she got so much practical knowledge, and she absorbed so
Speaker 1: much from everything she did that it kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense that she was quite ingenious and able to apply
Speaker 1: that information. Following the US Civil War in eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: Mattie moved away from the family and she found work
Speaker 1: in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the Columbia Paper Bag Company. A
Speaker 1: year into her work there, at the age of thirty,
Speaker 1: she started on a new project. Just as she had
Speaker 1: innovated the shuttle restraint for looms, Mattie once again came
Speaker 1: up with a way to improve the work done on
Speaker 1: the factory floor. This wasn't so much about safety, but
Speaker 1: she spent a while tinkering with the way paper bags
Speaker 1: were made. So any paper bag starts with a flat
Speaker 1: sheet of paper, and it's then folded and usually glued
Speaker 1: to hold its shape, and in the eighteen sixties this
Speaker 1: created a paper bag that was flat with one end
Speaker 1: folded and sealed, so it looked very much like a
Speaker 1: big Manilla envelope. These kinds of bags flat bags still
Speaker 1: exist today. Of course, you see them in places like
Speaker 1: card shops all the time, but they were not and
Speaker 1: are not ideal for every situation. They weren't even the
Speaker 1: only kind of paper bag. People knew how to fold
Speaker 1: bags that had flat bottoms, but no one had figured
Speaker 1: out a way for a machine to make a flat
Speaker 1: bottomed bag. They all had to be done by hand.
Speaker 1: So obviously, anyone who's ever had takeout, or if you've
Speaker 1: carried groceries or any other purchase, knows how much of
Speaker 1: a game changer this would have been. Think of every
Speaker 1: time you get a flat bottom shopping bag. And if
Speaker 1: someone had handed you a bag that was flat across
Speaker 1: and didn't have that stable bottom on it, how much
Speaker 1: more of a pain in the neck it would be
Speaker 1: to carry things. Margaret, though, thought more of the bag
Speaker 1: folding process could be automated, so she started working on
Speaker 1: a machine that would pull in the paper, cut it
Speaker 1: to the shape that was needed, and folded. The pneumatic
Speaker 1: paper feeding part of this invention was patented in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy as an improvement in paper feeding machines that on
Speaker 1: its own was impressive. But Night continued her work on
Speaker 1: paper feeders and automated bag folding, and in a move
Speaker 1: that would cement her place among important inventors, she also
Speaker 1: changed the shape of the bag that a machine could make,
Speaker 1: so she created a machine that could produce a bag
Speaker 1: with a flat, square bottom. So the function of this
Speaker 1: machine was described by Petroski in that article that we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and it was described as follows quote. Knight's
Speaker 1: machine worked by pulling from a roll of paper stock
Speaker 1: a sheet that it immediately started to form into a tube.
Speaker 1: Paste was applied where one side of the paper overlapped
Speaker 1: the other, thus completing the tube. Knight's machine performed its
Speaker 1: greatest magic by shaping the end of the tube into
Speaker 1: a flat bottom by means of a series of three folds,
Speaker 1: and the drawings that delineate the three step mechanical folding
Speaker 1: process look like instructions for industrial or agami. The first
Speaker 1: fold formed the end of the tube into a slit diamond,
Speaker 1: the second creased one tip of the diamond over to
Speaker 1: make a pentagon, and the third creased the other tip
Speaker 1: over to form an elongated hexagon. With the proper pasting
Speaker 1: taking place simultaneously with the folding, the closed bottom was
Speaker 1: formed quickly. The bag was completed by being severed from
Speaker 1: the continuously forming tube, at which point the cycle was repeated. Also,
Speaker 1: just as a side note in case you're trying to
Speaker 1: make this picture in your head, this bag did not
Speaker 1: have the fold in sides that we would associate with
Speaker 1: like a paper grocery bag today that let you easily
Speaker 1: flatten a bag for storage. That particular change to bags
Speaker 1: was invented in eighteen seventy two and is attributed to
Speaker 1: a man named Luther Crowell. Coming up, we will talk
Speaker 1: about how a jerk tried to steal Margaret's invention. Before
Speaker 1: we do, though, we will hear from some of the
Speaker 1: sponsors that keep Stuffy Miss in history Glass going. This
Speaker 1: whole process of developing this machine that could fold a
Speaker 1: flat bottom bag had taken a long time. At one point,
Speaker 1: Margaret has said to have spent so much of her
Speaker 1: time watching the machines at the Columbia paper bag company
Speaker 1: where she worked that her boss got irritated and thought
Speaker 1: she was wasting time. But she told him what she
Speaker 1: was doing and what she was working on, and surprisingly
Speaker 1: and delightfully he supported it. Mattie was really methodical about
Speaker 1: how she wanted to move forward with this new invention.
Speaker 1: She had created a prototype machine out of wood, and
Speaker 1: once she was confident that all of the mechanisms that
Speaker 1: she had designed worked consistently, she reached out to a
Speaker 1: machinist to make an iron version that would actually be
Speaker 1: valuable in a factory setting. She wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that when she applied for her patent, she had a
Speaker 1: sturdy and functional version of this bag holder to really
Speaker 1: ensure that her patent request would be approved. So at
Speaker 1: this point, Knight had achieved a level of savvy regarding
Speaker 1: her inventions and their value, but she hadn't really considered
Speaker 1: that once she shared this design, somebody else might try
Speaker 1: to claim it as their own, and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: While her design was being produced by a Boston metalworker,
Speaker 1: a man named Charles f Annon saw it, and he
Speaker 1: quickly submitted a patent application for it in his own name.
Speaker 1: To be clear, this was not the machinist she had
Speaker 1: hired to do this work. According to one version of
Speaker 1: the story, it was another one of his clients who
Speaker 1: happen to spot it while visiting the shop. Annon is
Speaker 1: said to have returned to the shop several times after
Speaker 1: initially seeing Knight's bag machines, so that he could surreptitiously
Speaker 1: get more information about it. There's also a version of
Speaker 1: the story that says that Annon was also a machinist
Speaker 1: who worked with the one that Margaret hired. It's really
Speaker 1: not clear whether which of these two things is true,
Speaker 1: if either of them. Whatever it was, though, he stole
Speaker 1: her work and Mattie discovered Annon's theft of her idea
Speaker 1: when she tried to submit her own patent application and
Speaker 1: she was informed that the device she was filing a
Speaker 1: patent for was already under application by Charles Annon. She
Speaker 1: knew that he had used her designs and so she
Speaker 1: sued him. This was not a small move on her part.
Speaker 1: She is said to have paid a great deal of
Speaker 1: money in legal costs by the time everything was over.
Speaker 1: That amount is reported differently. In some it's listed as
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars, in some it's one hundred dollars a day.
Speaker 1: And this hearing took sixteen days, that would have been
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred dollars, which was a lot of money at
Speaker 1: the time. But regardless however much she spent, it was
Speaker 1: worth it because when it came time for the hearing,
Speaker 1: Maddie showed up ready to describe every single piece of
Speaker 1: the machinery in question in detail. She had a raft
Speaker 1: of physical evidence to support her claim, including her sketches
Speaker 1: and her notes on the invention, information about her prototype,
Speaker 1: as well as entries in her diaries about her work.
Speaker 1: She also had her boss and landlady come in as
Speaker 1: witnesses to corroborate that, yes, she worked with machinery all
Speaker 1: the time and knew what she was doing and had
Speaker 1: been working on this very project. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: Annan showed up with nothing but the claim that a
Speaker 1: woman simply could not understand machinery like his alleged invention.
Speaker 1: But it was so evident to the courts that Margaret
Speaker 1: knew exactly what she was talking about, and she won
Speaker 1: the case, so she was able to go ahead with
Speaker 1: her patent application and Annon's was withdrawn. The writing of
Speaker 1: knights patent is very smart. It makes it clear that
Speaker 1: this is just one way that the mechan is works,
Speaker 1: and that she's patenting not the machine exactly, but the
Speaker 1: mode of operation. This meant somebody else could not change
Speaker 1: one little part of it and claim that as an improvement.
Speaker 1: Her application concludes with quote, I wish to have it
Speaker 1: understood that, believing myself to be the first to invent
Speaker 1: a device to hold or push back a point or
Speaker 1: portion of one edge of the paper tube while the
Speaker 1: blade or tucking knife forms the first fold represented in Fig. Ten,
Speaker 1: which is the basis of the flat bottom bag, I
Speaker 1: do not confine myself to any particular form, position, or
Speaker 1: mode of attaching the device referred to which I have
Speaker 1: designated a guide finger, nor limit myself to making it
Speaker 1: fixed or movable, as long as it performs the function
Speaker 1: for which I have devised and used it. I have
Speaker 1: made it in various forms and fixed as well as
Speaker 1: movable and having a rear word projection like a heel.
Speaker 1: The guide finger here and before described I believe to
Speaker 1: be the best form, but other forms will end her
Speaker 1: with the necessary modifications of the accompanying mechanism without altering
Speaker 1: the principle of operation by which the fold represented in
Speaker 1: figure ten four. I love that she was smart enough
Speaker 1: to do that, like don't be coming along with your
Speaker 1: with your eye moved the folding arm, and like claim
Speaker 1: you changed my machine. The patent for her bag machine,
Speaker 1: which was all it was called, was granted on July eleventh,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one, and once Night had her patent in hand,
Speaker 1: she needed capital if she was going to get a
Speaker 1: manufacturing process for the invention up and running. She found
Speaker 1: a business partner in Newton, Massachusetts who could finance her efforts,
Speaker 1: and she co founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company. As
Speaker 1: part of the founding of the new company, which was
Speaker 1: based in Hartford, Connecticut, Maddie got an initial payout of
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred dollars. She also got stock in the company,
Speaker 1: and she collected royalties on sales, which were capped at
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars. So this was lucrative at the time,
Speaker 1: and it probably like an awful lot of money to Margaret,
Speaker 1: but it was a little bit shortsighted because once again
Speaker 1: Night had perhaps not considered all of the variables in
Speaker 1: the situation, and in this case, she didn't build in
Speaker 1: ongoing income for herself from the company long term. She
Speaker 1: knew that she didn't want to run a factory. She
Speaker 1: had no interest in being a manager, so she wasn't
Speaker 1: collecting any kind of salary, and those royalties, like we said,
Speaker 1: were capped. It took a while for things to get
Speaker 1: up and running. Of course. On October seventeenth, eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: the Boston Evening Transcript ran a single sentence update that
Speaker 1: signaled that things were about to get up and running
Speaker 1: on that bag production front. It read, quote, the Aims
Speaker 1: Manufacturing Company have just finished the paper bag machine, the
Speaker 1: invention of Miss Margaret E. Knight of Ingleside. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that was presumably the company that was actually making all
Speaker 1: of these multiple production machines at scale so that an
Speaker 1: actual factory could begin. And once this was all up
Speaker 1: and running, that new machine was a marvel for paper
Speaker 1: bag companies, it meant that they had a much faster
Speaker 1: way to produce stock than having employees handfold flat bottom bags,
Speaker 1: so they had a vastly enlarged revenue stream. For grocers
Speaker 1: and shops, and easier means of carrying purchases home meant
Speaker 1: that shoppers were willing to buy more things, and for
Speaker 1: department stores, it meant that clerks didn't need to wrap
Speaker 1: goods for customers and tie them with twine. I read
Speaker 1: one thing that said that Macy's was very quick to
Speaker 1: adopt this because they were like time savor. The global
Speaker 1: impact of Margaret Knight's invention was so great that she
Speaker 1: was given a decoration of the Royal Legion of Honor
Speaker 1: by Queen Victoria. Margaret was interviewed about her work for
Speaker 1: Women's Journal in eighteen seventy two. That article opened by
Speaker 1: explaining that initially, as the machines are being manufactured quote,
Speaker 1: the workmen employed were at first skeptical, but she cured
Speaker 1: them of this by going daily and working among them,
Speaker 1: detecting mistakes and improving plans with a keener eye than
Speaker 1: any man in the works. And when questioned about her
Speaker 1: desire to work with machinery, from a young age. Margaret said, quote,
Speaker 1: it is only following out nature. As a child, I
Speaker 1: never cared for things that girls usually do. Dolls never
Speaker 1: possessed any charms for me. I couldn't see the sense
Speaker 1: of coddling bits of porcelain with senseless faces. The only
Speaker 1: things I wanted were a jackknife, a gimlet, and pieces
Speaker 1: of wood. I sighed sometimes because I was not like
Speaker 1: the other girls, but wisely concluded that I could not
Speaker 1: help it, and sought further consolation from my tools. I
Speaker 1: would always make things for my brothers. Did they want
Speaker 1: anything in the line of playthings, they always said, Mattie
Speaker 1: will make them for us. I'm not surprised at what
Speaker 1: I've done. I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as
Speaker 1: good a chance as a boy and have been put
Speaker 1: to my trade regularly. That write up concludes by saying
Speaker 1: about Mattie quote, she can no more help making machinery
Speaker 1: than Anna Dickinson can help making speeches. Following the launch
Speaker 1: of the Eastern paper Bag Company, Knight decided she was
Speaker 1: going to be an inventor full time. She kept an
Speaker 1: office in Boston and lived outside the city, first in Ashland, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: which is about twenty eight miles west of Boston. Been
Speaker 1: in Framingham, which is a little bit closer to Boston proper,
Speaker 1: at about twenty two miles west of the city. Margaret
Speaker 1: did not abandon the paper bag making business. She continued
Speaker 1: to work on improvements to the machine's process. In eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, she was granted patent number twenty two nine
Speaker 1: to two five for an updated version of her bag machine.
Speaker 1: This update made changes to the folding blade and the
Speaker 1: feeding blade to make the machine more reliable and even faster,
Speaker 1: and the model that was submitted with that patent request
Speaker 1: is now part of the collection of the National Museum
Speaker 1: of American History. Coming up, we will talk about some
Speaker 1: of Maddie's other inventions, but first we will pause for
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. There's a bag folder is Margaret Knight's
Speaker 1: most talked about invention. It's just one of many she
Speaker 1: ventured into a lot of new areas. In eighteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: she was granted a patent for a skirt protector. This
Speaker 1: was essentially a raincoat to go over the large, bustled
Speaker 1: and draped skirts of the day. It kind of like
Speaker 1: was a raincoat that went from the waist down, and
Speaker 1: the intention was to keep fine fabrics from being damaged
Speaker 1: by inclement weather. Knight described her invention to me somewhat
Speaker 1: quaintly as quote a shield which is capable of being
Speaker 1: expanded to nearly a flat position for the reception of
Speaker 1: the skirts, and then of being closed and held upon
Speaker 1: the latter while being worn. In eighteen eighty four, she
Speaker 1: was granted a patent for a new type of clasp.
Speaker 1: The invention was, in the words of Knight's patent application,
Speaker 1: quote an improved device for clasping one or more thicknesses
Speaker 1: of robes or textile fabric for the purpose of holding
Speaker 1: the same in any required position, either as a detached
Speaker 1: clasp for uniting the otherwise the edges of said robe
Speaker 1: or sheet of fabric, or as a means of attachment
Speaker 1: from the end of a flexible connection to a fixed point,
Speaker 1: or from said connection provided with means for securing its
Speaker 1: other end. The illustration for this clasp and the document
Speaker 1: is sort of fabulous that shows the clasp being used
Speaker 1: to secure a blanket over the lap of a man
Speaker 1: driving a carriage, and the clasp itself is really interesting.
Speaker 1: It uses two circular spring loaded ends of a tethered mechanism,
Speaker 1: and then they nestle inside one another. Once the fabric
Speaker 1: is situated on top of one circular loop of the clasp,
Speaker 1: the other one can be reduced in size enough to
Speaker 1: fit over the fabric and then inside of the other
Speaker 1: circular loop. Once the spring is released, the nestled loop
Speaker 1: opens up wide enough that it can't pass back through
Speaker 1: the other one. So think of this sort of as
Speaker 1: like an embroidery hoop, if the smaller hoop was intended
Speaker 1: to pass entirely through the larger one and then expand
Speaker 1: out to the same size, so catching the fabric in
Speaker 1: between them. I really really love this illustration because not
Speaker 1: only does it show the man driving his carriage with
Speaker 1: his blanket clasped on either side with this, but like
Speaker 1: it even has like the horse hoofs drawn in with
Speaker 1: like clouds of dust like pigpen around it. It's really
Speaker 1: really fun. Another area of interest for Margaret was the
Speaker 1: manufacture of shoes. In eighteen ninety, she was granted a
Speaker 1: patent for a sole cutting machine, and this was a
Speaker 1: design that carried sheets of rubber along a conveyor belt
Speaker 1: that quote intermittently moves horizontally beneath a pattern and cutting
Speaker 1: device which have a vertical reciprocating movement and intermittently descend.
Speaker 1: Clamp the material upon the apron and cut out a
Speaker 1: complete sole upon each of the tablets or beds while
Speaker 1: it is at rest, and then once a shoe sole
Speaker 1: was cut, the belt would just move along and take
Speaker 1: away the shoe sole and the waist rubber. At the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century, Margaret turned her attention to
Speaker 1: steam engines and Janey Wary of nineteen oh three, she
Speaker 1: was granted a patent on her rotary engine. She explained
Speaker 1: its function as follows quote. The improvements relate particularly to
Speaker 1: the construction and arrangement of pistons and their abutments for
Speaker 1: rotary engines, either single acting or compound, and the combination
Speaker 1: of two or more pistons in a manner to obviate
Speaker 1: vibration of the engine when in operation. And the invention
Speaker 1: consists in hanging a plurality of pistons upon bearings eccentric
Speaker 1: to the center of the piston chamber. When two pistons
Speaker 1: are used, they are arranged with their eccentricity diametrically opposite
Speaker 1: to each other, and when three are used. The two
Speaker 1: end pistons are hung with the eccentricity diametrically opposed to
Speaker 1: the middle position, and the steam pressure area of the
Speaker 1: middle piston and its centrifugal force when in motion should
Speaker 1: be substantially equal to that of the two end pistons.
Speaker 1: The invention further consists in making the so called steam
Speaker 1: abutment of a plate of metal and attaching its upper
Speaker 1: edge securely to the engine casting above the cylinder, while
Speaker 1: the lower edge projects downward into a slot formed in
Speaker 1: each piston, in which it slides as the pistons revolve
Speaker 1: around their eccentric bearings about the engine shaft. This engine
Speaker 1: was intended to run things like the various machines she
Speaker 1: had invented in her career. Yeah, so, taking away less
Speaker 1: of a need for mill workers and enabling them to
Speaker 1: have just an easier time of running the various machines
Speaker 1: that she had created. In nineteen thirteen, an article that
Speaker 1: was titled Women who are Inventors appeared in the New
Speaker 1: York Times, and although it covered the achievements of multiple women,
Speaker 1: Night was important enough that the subtitle called out only
Speaker 1: her by name, reading, Miss Margaret E. Knight is now
Speaker 1: at work on her eighty ninth invention, and other women
Speaker 1: who have shown inventive genius. The section from the article
Speaker 1: that's about Margaret opens with quote, the oldest of them
Speaker 1: and the one having the most to her credit, is
Speaker 1: Miss Margaret E. Knight, who, at the age of seventy
Speaker 1: is working twenty hours a day on her eighty ninth invention.
Speaker 1: And it goes on to tell the story of her
Speaker 1: early cotton mill days and how her bag folding machine
Speaker 1: brought her accolades from the British crown. As Night's name
Speaker 1: became synonymous with invention, it was also increasingly associated with
Speaker 1: something else entirely, and that was the early women's equality movement.
Speaker 1: As the nineteenth century came to a close in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century began, Margaret's name was frequently invoked in articles
Speaker 1: that showcased the accomplishments of women as a way to
Speaker 1: make the case for equality. Based on her eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: two article quote we mentioned earlier, it's clear that she
Speaker 1: felt that women and girls should be given the same
Speaker 1: opportunities as men. Obviously, the time when that binary structure
Speaker 1: was the only way that those kinds of discussions were
Speaker 1: really framed but none of the later articles that used
Speaker 1: her as an example of the ingenuity of women were
Speaker 1: at her and they didn't include quotes from her, so
Speaker 1: we don't really know how she felt about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: her actual thoughts on the movement itself are kind of
Speaker 1: a mystery. On October twelfth, nineteen fourteen, Margaret died at
Speaker 1: the age of seventy eight in Framingham Hospital. Her obituary
Speaker 1: mentioned that her death came quote following an illness of
Speaker 1: several weeks of a complication of diseases, which is pretty nebulous.
Speaker 1: We don't really know the cause of death. She had
Speaker 1: been working right up to the end of her life,
Speaker 1: continuing to spend long hours in her workshop, which seemed
Speaker 1: to be exactly where she wanted to be. When Margaret
Speaker 1: Knight died, her obituaries honored her achievements, but they've also
Speaker 1: caused some problems in terms of the historical record. For one,
Speaker 1: a lot of them claim she was the first woman
Speaker 1: to receive a US patent, and this is untrue. Although
Speaker 1: she may have been the first woman to have her
Speaker 1: portrait exhibited in the US Patent Office, do we have
Speaker 1: this portrait? We do not, Okay, that's why it's maybe
Speaker 1: people have referenced it in other writings, but I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had this moment of like, why don't we know
Speaker 1: what it looks like. Some obituaries stated that she held
Speaker 1: eighty seven patents, which is also untrue, although she probably
Speaker 1: had that many inventions under her belt, just not necessarily
Speaker 1: patenting all of them. What's true is that at the
Speaker 1: end of her life Margaret Knight held twenty seven patents.
Speaker 1: She had changed the retail world with her bag folder
Speaker 1: when she was barely in her thirties, and she made
Speaker 1: a life for herself working solely as an inventor when
Speaker 1: that was really a career path that was almost unheard
Speaker 1: of for a woman. She is often noted as having
Speaker 1: died with less than three hundred dollars to her name,
Speaker 1: as sort of a sad coda to her life story, like, oh,
Speaker 1: she died destitute, but in nineteen fourteen, that wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: living destitute. By relative worth calculations, it would have been
Speaker 1: more than nine thousand dollars today. So she didn't have
Speaker 1: a huge fortune. No, but she was, and she had
Speaker 1: supported herself by patenting her inventions and then selling those
Speaker 1: patents and then being paid royalties on their use. She
Speaker 1: never married or had children, so she didn't need to
Speaker 1: leave a financial legacy to support anybody else. For someone
Speaker 1: who had started life incredibly poor and had had to
Speaker 1: work a full time job as a child just so
Speaker 1: her family could eat, you didn't make the cases. She
Speaker 1: had really achieved quite a lot in being financially independent
Speaker 1: and just able to live as she wished. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, Margaret Knight was posthumously inducted into the
Speaker 1: National Inventors Hall of Fame. I wish I knew more
Speaker 1: about her personality. That's my family. We don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of that. Yeah. I have such a fun listener mail.
Speaker 1: Oh good, oh, I love this one. This is from
Speaker 1: our listener Liz, who says I made my family go
Speaker 1: see the Amazon Rainforest carousel at the Philadelphia Zoo and
Speaker 1: also the animals. Liz writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy. Recently
Speaker 1: some friends of me and my husban been reminded us
Speaker 1: that we could still be social in the winter. We
Speaker 1: agreed and set a date to bring our kids up
Speaker 1: to visit, with no particular plan in place. Then I
Speaker 1: listened to an older Saturday classic, The History of carousels,
Speaker 1: and these friends live near Philadelphia, so naturally I texted
Speaker 1: them immediately and said, we're going to the zoo. We
Speaker 1: packed up our car and our three kids, all under three,
Speaker 1: and drove two hours from Central Pennsylvania to Philadelphia. I
Speaker 1: told the kids it was to see the zoo. It
Speaker 1: kind of was, but it was to see the carousel.
Speaker 1: The zoo itself is an interesting place. They're very proud
Speaker 1: of the fact that they are considered the first zoo
Speaker 1: in the US. There are parts that definitely feel older
Speaker 1: and definitely more like people were guessing what animals needed,
Speaker 1: which I guess they were. There are different kinds of
Speaker 1: really cool birds where there might have been larger animals
Speaker 1: one hundred years ago. I'm sure if I really wanted to,
Speaker 1: I could look into that more, but I think it
Speaker 1: would just make me sad. Way, do I understand that sentiment.
Speaker 1: I've attached pictures for tax I took a lot of
Speaker 1: pictures of the carousel while also trying to hold one
Speaker 1: of my kiddos for safety. The rest are some of
Speaker 1: the animals we saw, though many were inside because it
Speaker 1: was cold. I do love that the zoo celebrated the
Speaker 1: snapping turtle's birthday by putting stickers up. I guess he
Speaker 1: doesn't move that much because those stickers were on the
Speaker 1: outside of the tank. They had four Galapagos tortoises, but
Speaker 1: this big boy pictured was huge. Sorry for the long email,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to share how fun it was
Speaker 1: to bring my family to a piece of history I
Speaker 1: only knew about because the pod. I love the pod
Speaker 1: and the knowledge and perspective you guys bring. I'm eager
Speaker 1: to share it with my kiddos when they're a bit older.
Speaker 1: Right now, it's wheels on the bus or bust. I'm
Speaker 1: afraid it was a long two hour drive, Liz, I
Speaker 1: love everything about this email. One. I just love that
Speaker 1: you were like, we're going to see that carousel. Two
Speaker 1: the pictures of this carousel are so beautiful. By the way,
Speaker 1: to explain the reference of the tortoise and the stickers,
Speaker 1: they put up like stickers that look like a birthday
Speaker 1: hat and a gift, And if the tortoise is standing
Speaker 1: in just the right position, it looks like he's wearing
Speaker 1: the hat and the gift. And apparently he moves so
Speaker 1: little that it was safe to put up stationary stickers
Speaker 1: that he will often look like he is wearing the
Speaker 1: hat and receiving the gift, which I love. This carousel
Speaker 1: is so beautiful and I have honestly not seen very
Speaker 1: many pictures of it, so this was a real treat.
Speaker 1: Like you can see clearly that there's like a beautiful
Speaker 1: snake carved into it in one place, and like there
Speaker 1: are there's so much foliage, and there are paintings of animals,
Speaker 1: and it's just a really, really beautiful thing. And I
Speaker 1: cannot tell you how much I appreciate that you took
Speaker 1: the time to take all of these photographs and share
Speaker 1: them with us, as well as sharing some very cute
Speaker 1: animals from the zoo. I'm still laughing about the tortoise
Speaker 1: because he really does look very funny. There's a great
Speaker 1: rhino picture. I love a rhinosiris, and of course one
Speaker 1: of the best of the wild animals, the red panda,
Speaker 1: which I think everyone wishes we could all just have
Speaker 1: one as a pet, right we all wish that. No,
Speaker 1: this is absolutely gorgeous, and I love that you are
Speaker 1: going on little history field trips. It makes me so
Speaker 1: happy in my dark little heart. So thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for sending us this email. If you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us, you can do so at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio. You can also find us on
Speaker 1: social media as missed in History and if you have
Speaker 1: not yet subscribed to the podcast and want to so
Speaker 1: you don't miss out on a single new or old
Speaker 1: episode as we release classics and maybe get inspired to
Speaker 1: go travel somewhere, you could do that on the iHeartRadio
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Speaker 1: you Missed in History class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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