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Written by: Ruth Bass 6/10/2006 9:32:50 AM
If you’ve ever plunked a brown paper bag on the floor where it would stand unsupported, ready for filling, then pause a moment in the grocery checkout to honor Margaret Knight.

On Oct. 28, 1868, Ms. Knight had a brainstorm. Two years later she patented an invention that put the flat bottom on paper bags. Until then, everyone was using a hand-glued, envelope-style bag. Her agile mind created a gadget that could be added to paper-folding machines so the big could be manufactured.

Her invention cut, folded and glued the bottom of the bags.

Not surprisingly, some of the workmen at the factory at first refused to install the equipment. They figured no woman knew that much about machines. Several sources report that one man tried to steal her idea and make it his own, but she was able to prove she had thought of it.

It seems like such a simple thing, making a square-bottomed bag. But it didn’t exist until 138 years ago. It’s like the marvelous ceramic pots we saw on a Turkish island, relics from Greece and Rome. Called amphoras, they were gracefully turned and decorated by talented potters, but they needed a stand of some kind because the base of the pot went down to a slender point. Without support, they would just tip over.

A Chicago lawyer who was perusing these antiquities with us remarked, “Imagine the heroic status of the guy who first said, ‘let’s put a flat bottom on it.’ ” Perhaps there were doubters then, too. But most pots today (genuine woks excepted) are steady, needing no propping.

Now many of the bags we get in stores are plastic, slippery and without flat bottoms. They collapse in the back of the car, letting soda bottles and soup cans slither out. But they are easier to carry because several handles can be held at one time.

The paper bag may have lost its place as the No. 1 container, but it’s still useful. And on a shopping trip, it’s a good moment when the purchases have piled up enough to make a clerk dig down for a shopping bag (paper with a flat bottom, a la Margaret Knight, plus handles).

In some stores, bags have become a mark of distinction. Bloomingdale’s brown bag, so labeled, the signature plaid from Burberry’s, the triangular bag that marks a visit to Takashamayo, the glossy midnight blue bag from the Ritz Carlton Shanghai … almost collectors’ items.

And wouldn’t Margaret Knight be surprised to see flat-bottomed paper bags with handles, filled with presents and stuffed with bright tissue paper, designed especially for Christmas, Hanukkah, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and what have you.

For the lucky few, there’s the thrill of receiving a small, unique pale turquoise bag, the signature of Tiffany, also known for the turquoise box with the white ribbon.

Margaret was born in York, Maine, was called Mattie and was a kid who watched how things worked. Some of the stories about her say her creativity first showed when she put together sleds and kites for her brothers. By the time she turned 12, like many of her peers, she was put to work in a textile mill. Apparently upset by workers being hurt by their machines, she designed an attachment for the looms so the shuttles could be stopped if necessary – and worker injuries avoided.

In “Famous and not so Famous Women,” Carol Edwards writes that Margaret had to leave the mills for health reasons – like many other children – by the time she reached her late teens. On to Springfield, Massachusetts, where she took a job at the Columbia Paper Bag Company.

Living in a boarding house room, she planned her paper-bag attachment and built a wooden model. Eventually, Edwards writes, when the young inventor was satisfied with her idea, a Boston machinist made the iron model needed to apply for a patent.

Few people, children and adults, who brown-bag it to school or work each day know Margaret Knight’s name. But she made it a lot easier to pack an apple and a sandwich in a paper bag, and she does have some recognition in current books for children.

By the time Margaret Knight died in 1914, she had owned her own business and received more than 25 patents for shoe-making machines, for a window frame and sash and a numbering machine, all unusual achievements for a woman of her era.

At the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., home of Charles Lindbergh’s plane and various space crafts, there’s also the paper bag machine invented by Margaret Knight.

Her bag has gone where no bag has gone before. And it’s still on the move.

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