Biography · Level 2 · 166 words

Margaret Knight's Bag Machine

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

In 1868, a paper bag was shaped like an envelope: flat, weak at the bottom, useless for anything heavy.

Margaret Knight worked at a bag factory in Springfield, Massachusetts. Machines were her language. At twelve, she saw a steel shuttle fly off a loom and hurt a worker, and designed a guard to stop it. She studied the bag machines and saw the missing step: none of them could fold a flat bottom.

So she designed one that could. It cut, folded, and glued a bag that stood open on its own, the shape grocery bags still have today. She built a wooden model, then had a machine shop build it in iron.

At that shop, a man named Charles Annan studied her iron model and quietly filed for the patent himself. In court he argued that a woman could not understand such a machine. Knight answered with two years of diaries, drawings, and models. She won, and the patent was issued to her in 1871.

Comprehension questions

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4 questions
1. What is the passage mainly about?

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A. Knight invented a machine that folded flat-bottomed bags, then proved in court that the design was hers.
The passage joins the invention and the fight over it. The weak envelope-shaped bag is only the setup, and Annan filed for a design the passage shows was hers.

2. The passage suggests that Knight won the case because

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C. her long record of the design work showed it was hers
Annan's argument was about what a woman could understand, not about the machine. Against two years of diaries, drawings, and models, a claim with no record behind it lost.

3. In this passage, a "patent" is

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B. the legal right to own an invention
Annan filed for the patent on a machine he did not design, and the court issued it to Knight once she proved the design was hers. Both uses point to legal ownership of an invention.

4. According to the passage, what did Knight design at age twelve?

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D. A guard to stop shuttles flying off looms.
The second paragraph says she saw a shuttle fly off a loom and hurt a worker, and designed a guard to stop it. The bag machine came later, at the factory.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.