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Originally Posted by Lady Sidhe
Brown Paper bags--Margaret Knight, holder of 27 patents, is best remembered for inventing the machinery which made the flat-bottomed sack possible. Shortly after the civil war, she worked for the Columbia Paper Bag company in Mass.She recieved a patent in 1870, successfully defeating a man who had applied for the same patent (he'd stolen the idea and claimed that because she was a woman, she couldn't possibly have understood enough about mechanical complexities to create the machine--a court ruled against him).
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Even more interesting is her first known invention. At the age of 12, she was working 13 hour shifts in a textile mill in Massachusetts. One of her friends was killed by a sharp steel-tipped shuttle that broke off a loom. It was a common accident in those days, and was the cause of many deaths. She invented a guard that would prevent a broken shuttle from flying off the loom, and would also shut the machine down. Her invention saved many lives. As a 12 year old girl, she never saw a penny for that invention, but she was happy to know that it saved many lives.