Margaret knight left school at the age of 12. In 1849, the girl went to work in a cotton factory. It was then that the factory began to introduce a modified loom with a needle in it. But the technology is far from perfect, and this girl has seen firsthand how needles hurt children her age. So she decided to create a fail-safe for that. After only a few weeks, she developed a defense mechanism to protect employees from injury.
Unfortunately, no one suggested to Margaret that she could patent her innovation, and a cunning “inventor” took her idea. Margaret filed suit only in 1871, and was duly granted the patent that originally belonged to her. Amazingly, Margaret had more than 90 inventions, 26 of which were her adult patents. One of them, still widely used today, is the flat-bottomed paper bag we often see in shopping. Knight proposed not only this form of packaging, but also the creation of a manufacturing machine.
