Talk:Margaret E. Knight

Royal Legion of Honour
I know it's referenced and is in the book mentioned but searches suggest no one else was ever 'awarded the Decoration of the Royal Legion of Honour by Queen Victoria'. I think it's an error or hoax. I've sent an e-mail to the editor of the book to see if he knows any more. --Cavrdg (talk) 08:41, 12 April 2015 (UTC)We are so sorry for everyones loss of "Margaret Eloise Knight" but we hope her family is still moving on down the chart, (that means keeping the family going from 1800 to 1900 to 2000) we hope you continue the legacy, Knight—–
 * The NYT article ("WOMEN WHO ARE INVENTORS: Miss Margaret E. Knight Is Now at Work on Her Eighty-ninth Invention -- Other Women Who Have Shown Inventive Genius") describes Queen Victoria's decoration as the "Royal Legion of Honor", but I was unable to find any other reference to this. A quick Google primarily finds references to only Knight, suggesting to me as well that this may have been an error. No other source has specified the decoration, and I feel it's entirely possible all the other authors have just been following the NYT. – Anon423 (talk) 00:41, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 18:05, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

"Where are all the women, Wikipedia?"
In an essay published today in The Guardian, Laura Bates laments how short this article is, and more broadly how little Wikipedia has to say about women inventors:


 * If you were to try and research Knight’s life and work, you might struggle. Her Wikipedia profile is just under 500 words long; Edison’s is more than 8,500. Of course, Edison’s contribution to the development of the electric light warrants a significant write-up, and his legacy deserves a lengthy profile. But his Wikipedia page also contains minute detail about his early life, diets and views on religion. By contrast, information on Knight’s page is scant, though she too invented an item still widely used today. Her profile lacks many details (including any mention of her first invention), which are available elsewhere online, particularly on websites dedicated to commemorating the work of female inventors. That such resources exist says a lot about the erasure of women such as Knight from more mainstream information sources.

Just my two cents about this. Given a choice between improving this article and improving other articles on women inventors, it may be better to focus on other articles. That may seem counterintuitive. However, if this article is quickly improved, that may make the journalist's important point seem less urgent than it is. The point is not to protect the encyclopedia's public image, but to improve the encyclopedia. That may mean trying to fix its flaws while also not hiding them.

Omphaloscope talk 15:59, 9 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I read the piece by Laura Bates and my first instinct was to tidy up the article, which I've briefly done. But the points you raise are fair, so I will leave it otherwise unimproved. FYI the Guardian piece is listed at Press_coverage_2016. And also FYI, the BTL exemplifies Lewis's law: "the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism". Carbon Caryatid (talk) 19:31, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Photo of 'Margaret E. Knight'?
I am a bit sceptical of the photograph that is supposedly of Margaret E.Knight. This is simply due to the way the woman looks in the photo, and the quality of the photo. According to the article, she was born in 1838. I would guess that the woman in the picture is in her 20s or early 30s? This would date the picture to around 1870 or earlier. The way she is dressed and her hairstyle look to me to be more in keeping with the 1930s or 40s, many decades later. Also, the quality of the image is much better than I would expect. Of course, it could be that the dates given for her life are incorrect, and she actually lived in the 20th century? Can anybody shed any light?NewBrightonRock (talk) 00:59, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm also skeptical, as I can find no pages online definitively having a photograph of her. Pinging uploader User:Gobonobo. MSNBC thinks its her, but I wouldn't give it too much weight. Other sites use this illustration which I think is more in line with the dress of the time period. Opencooper (talk) 09:13, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
 * This is the photo that is used both in the Guardian article mentioned in the above section and in MSNBC's "7 Days of Genius". I don't believe that dates for her life are incorrect and agree that this photograph seems to belong to the wrong era. Given the concerns, I've removed the image. Thanks, gobonobo  + c 15:26, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I just noticed, the Guardian caption says "...a prolific inventor so little-known that we aren’t even able to verify this photo of her." haha. Opencooper (talk) 15:39, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I also suspect that this Smithsonian article used to have the picture in question, though it was removed as likely misidentified. Too bad archive.org didn't catch the wrong image so I could confirm it.
 * User:Scortch1966 removed the photo, I surmise for this reason. – Anon423 (talk) 07:10, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Scortch1966 removed the photo, I surmise for this reason. – Anon423 (talk) 07:10, 2 September 2021 (UTC)


 * The correct picture seems to be available here  Kaltenmeyer (talk) 13:54, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Is that picture in the public domain? I think since it's pre-1926 it's safe. Am I reading WP:Public domain correctly? – Anon423 (talk) 18:43, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I am surprised by the photo still attached to this article. which is now going around in a mem about Margaret Knight. it's clearly mid-20th century, but she died in 1914. 208.114.93.61 (talk) 12:55, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * You're not talking about the current picture (in the infobox), are you? I thought the incorrect picture was removed. – Anon423 (talk) 03:46, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Place of birth
In the introductory paragraph this page says Knight was born in England but later in her bio and in her info box it says she was born in York, Maine. Which was it? Jtgw1981 (talk) 14:42, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * As that statement in the lead contradicts the article itself and appears to have no factual basis I have removed it.-- P-K3 (talk) 19:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Description of Innovation
There is an apparent, obvious typographic error in the description: "Thus, she began experimenting with models of machines that could automatically fold, cut, and past flat-bottomed paper bags." The word "past" ought to be "paste." There is not in the English language a transitive verb "past" that has anything to do with the construction of a paper bag. I edited the article to correct this typographic error, adding the letter "e" to the end of the incorrectly typed "past." Someone has reverted my edit, citing a "copyright issue" involving the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This seems unlikely and flimsy grounds for such a revert, since the section I edited bears no citation of that source.

I might add that I have read a lot of patents, and the usual language reads "Description of the Invention." It never reads "Description of Innovation." Using "innovation" instead of "invention" looks inflated, flowery, and cheapening. I once spoke to a student enrolled in a well-advertised correspondence "institute of technology," asking if he were studying to be an electrical engineer. He stiffened. "Electronics Engineer," he corrected me, as if to prove he would be fixing computers, not toasters. Keep speaking that way and tell them you went to 1-800-CAREER1 institute, and 10 years from now, you will still be waiting tables in this restaurant, I thought. "Innovation" is a nearly-current, fairly played-out buzzword that doesn't say anything more and says something less accurately, less precisely in this case, than "invention." "Innovation" puts a corporate-ese sensitized reader on edge. He expects at any moment to hear about a "paradigm shift" and then have to pound his head against something hard to shake out the garbage.

At a minimum, though; may I please add an "e" to the word "past" so this description makes grammatical sense?

The revert took about 2 minutes to happen. I asked about this a few hours ago. Silence = yes. I am re-implementing my correction.

Ah, I see the editor was after a ~2000 word entry preceding my reverted single-letter correction. Anyway, no harm, no foul. Someone got a little carried away, threw the baby out with the bathwater. Cheers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.110.72.145 (talk) 23:35, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

What was Charles Annan's legal case?
According to the Smithsonian article archived here, and according to most online sources about Margaret Knight,


 * ... Knight, who spent a large chunk of her hard-earned money on quality legal counsel, handed Annan a humiliating courtroom drubbing. In response to his bigoted argument that no woman could be capable of designing such a machine ...

In other words, Annan's primary legal claim was that Knight, a woman, simply couldn't be an inventor.

In contrast, the AMSE (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) article archived here argues:


 * Anan's only argument was that his modifications (presumably changes introduced because he could not perfectly remember the details of the model) made his a different machine.

And


 * Myth—and children's books—claim that few took her inventions seriously because of her gender, and that Anan argued in court that Knight couldn't have invented the flat-bottomed paper bag machine because she was a woman. The recorded facts show otherwise, but, late in life, Knight did bemoan: "I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly."

In other words, Charles Anan (ASME is consistent in using this spelling) made a legitimate legal argument that failed (because he had in fact stolen the invention), and that it was modern myth-making that turned the thief Anan into the bigoted Annan. Does anyone have other sources on this part of Knight's life, and can anyone shed light on the facts of the case? PublicolaMinor (talk) 21:04, 26 October 2021 (UTC) If you have reason to discount this, please explain. – Anon423 (talk) 04:13, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I did see this when I reorganized/rewrote most of the article. If the myth, as the ASME article remarks, dominates in modern tellings, such has unfortunately been the case in the other sources I found. The article currently reflects those sources. I would love to see a deeper treatment of the non-mythical truth, "The recorded facts [that] show otherwise". Let me know if you dig up anything. – Anon423 (talk) 03:45, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * , would you like to come talk about this? The ASME source states: "Myth—and children's books—claim that few took her inventions seriously because of her gender, and that Anan argued in court that Knight couldn't have invented the flat-bottomed paper bag machine because she was a woman. The recorded facts show otherwise, but, late in life, Knight did bemoan: "I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly.""
 * I'm not sure I like the current wording. I tried to give due weight to the different descriptions between authors, but it's a bit wordy and perhaps intrusive. You could say it interrupts the flow of the paragraph. I'm open to suggestions. Annan argued that "she could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities of the machine", possibly exploiting prejudice against women, and/or that his was a different machine (likely on the basis of details he had misremembered), and that she had not succeeded in creating a working machine. Some authors, such as Ryan Smith of the Smithsonian Magazine, state Annan argued no woman could have designed the machine, though according to Michael Abrams of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, this is a modern exaggeration of Annan's (or Anan's) sole argument that his was a different machine. – Anon423 (talk) 12:32, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Principally I object to the phrase "beyond belief". Beyond whose belief?  Just saying that it was exaggerated would be enough. Leotohill (talk) 12:40, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * With apologies, where is the phrase "beyond belief"? – Anon423 (talk) 13:35, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oops, my mistake. It was "beyond reality" which I misremembered as "beyond belief". It still strikes me as non-neutral, but only through tone, and not the literal meaning of the words.  I can live with it. Leotohill (talk) 18:01, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, concerns over that particular wording may be now obsolete since I decided to rewrite much of the language about that topic. I hope it's thorough and more neutral now, though i'm afraid it's overly wordy. I'm tempted to replace it with something more condensed, like... Annan argued that "she could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities of the machine", possibly appealing to sexism, and that she had not created a working machine, with his being different (likely on the basis of details he had misremembered). Annan is sometimes said to have argued no woman could have designed the machine, as in Smithsonian (magazine), though according to Michael Abrams of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, this is a modern exaggeration of Annan's (or Anan's) sole argument that his machine was different. ... though that isn't much shorter and it that might veer towards original research. – Anon423 (talk) 03:07, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Legal Challenges and Patent Victory
Knight's journey to patent her paper bag machine was not without challenges. In a dramatic twist, Charles Anan, who had observed her prototype, attempted to claim the invention as his own. However, Knight initiated a lawsuit and, after a protracted legal battle, substantiated her claim with meticulous drawings and prototypes. In 1871, she was rightfully awarded the patent, marking a significant victory for inventors and setting a precedent for intellectual property rights. Wuwenhui (talk) 18:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Impact on Society and Continued Relevance
The introduction of the flat-bottomed paper bag addressed a significant pain point in the packaging industry by improving both efficiency and functionality. This innovation not only optimized the shopping experience but also facilitated the broader adoption of paper bags in various retail settings, from grocery stores to department stores. Today, Knight's invention continues to influence packaging design, underscoring the lasting impact of her work. Wuwenhui (talk) 18:44, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

A Legacy of Innovation and Gender Equality
Margaret E. Knight's legacy goes beyond her inventions. By challenging the norms of her time and advocating for the rights and recognition of women inventors, she broke significant barriers in a male-dominated field. Her tenacity and dedication to innovation not only advanced technological and industrial progress, but also advanced the cause of gender equality in science and technology. Knight's life and accomplishments are still inspiring and fueling conversations about the critical need for inclusion and diversity in innovation, making her an enduring figure in American history and more. Wuwenhui (talk) 18:45, 12 April 2024 (UTC)