Margaret E. Knight
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40 free Margaret E. Knight trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Margaret E. Knight changed how the world carries its shopping, yet few people know her name. She grew up poor, left school as a child to work in a mill, and went on to design the machine that folds the flat-bottomed paper bag, then had to fight to prove the idea was hers. This quiz collects the fun facts of her life: the childhood tinkering, the factory accident that led to her first invention, the bag machine and the dispute over it, and the long run of later patents that followed. It suits students working on a history or invention project, teachers after a ready-made classroom round, and anyone curious about the person behind an object they use every week.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What steel-tipped loom part injured a mill worker, prompting 12-year-old Margaret E. Knight to invent a safety device?
A shuttle
A shuttle could fly out of a loom at high speed, and her device to stop it spread through the mills, though she never patented it or earned any money from it.
Q 02In 1871, which European monarch decorated Margaret E. Knight for her paper bag machine?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria honoured her in 1871, as bags made on the new machine came into use around the world.
Q 03A local obituary honoured Margaret E. Knight as a woman version of which famous American inventor?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison was the yardstick, yet the comparison ended at the bank: she held some 27 patents but profited little and left an estate of under $300.
Q 04What did Margaret E. Knight present, with journals and models, to prove the bag machine was her own design?
Blueprints
Blueprints drawn in her own meticulous hand, backed by witnesses from the machine shops, won her the dispute after a 16-day hearing.
Q 05Margaret E. Knight's paper bag machine cut the paper and folded it, then did what to finish each bag?
Glued it
Glued it, all in one pass: a single machine did the work of 30 people making flat-bottomed bags by hand.
Q 06Engineering historian Henry Petroski summed up Margaret E. Knight's bag machine as industrial what?
Origami
Origami fits: the machine made a three-step fold to form each flat bottom, a job that had been slow and costly handwork.
Q 07Margaret E. Knight, pioneer of the flat-bottomed paper bag, was born on the date of which February holiday?
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day was her birthday, though she never married and gave her working life to machines.
Q 08Margaret E. Knight earned six patents for machines that cut material for which everyday product?
Shoes
Shoes filled her 1880s and 1890s: she designed sole-cutting machines and, as with most of her ideas, sold the rights to manufacturers.
Q 09Which Washington institution holds a working scale model of Margaret E. Knight's paper bag machine?
The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian keeps the patent model, a small assembly of gold-coloured gears and springs that really works, in its American history museum.
Q 10Late in life, Margaret E. Knight said she was sorry she had not had as good a chance as whom?
A boy
A boy would have been put to a trade regularly, she said; her own schooling had ended at age 12.
Q 11By which childhood nickname, used by family and friends, was the inventor Margaret E. Knight known?
Mattie
Mattie stuck for good, and the name now fronts both a picture book and a young-adult novel about her.
Q 12In which state was Margaret E. Knight born, before mill work drew her widowed mother's family to New Hampshire?
Maine
Maine was her birthplace, in the coastal town of York; the sleds she built as a girl were the envy of the local boys.
Q 13Which New Hampshire mill city became home to the young Margaret E. Knight after her father died?
Manchester
Manchester offered factory jobs to a family left poor, and she quit school at 12 to earn a wage there.
Q 21Which newspaper reported that Margaret E. Knight, in her seventies, worked twenty hours a day on her 89th invention?
The New York Times
The New York Times made her the lead example in a feature on women who invent, written to rebut a physician who had claimed women were not inventive.
Q 22Late in Margaret E. Knight's life, campaigners for which cause held up her inventions as proof of women's abilities?
Suffrage
Suffrage newspapers and magazines profiled her beside other women who held patents, turning a lifelong tinkerer into an argument for the vote.
Q 23In her sixties, Margaret E. Knight patented several rotary designs for which kind of machine?
Engine
Q 14After leaving school at 12, Margaret E. Knight worked in a New England mill that processed which material?
Cotton
Cotton spinning and weaving meant low pay and long hours, from before dawn until after dusk, among machinery with no safety rules.
Q 15Besides sleds, which handmade toys made the young Margaret E. Knight well known around her hometown?
Kites
Kites were her speciality, and she made toys for her brothers too, showing a knack for tools long before any factory job.
Q 16As a girl, Margaret E. Knight preferred a jack-knife and a gimlet to which more typical playthings?
Dolls
Dolls held no appeal: she later said a knife, a gimlet and scraps of timber were the only things she had wanted.
Q 17Margaret E. Knight's first working bag-machine prototype was built from which material before an iron model followed?
Wood
Wood was enough to prove the idea: the rickety first model turned out more than 1,000 bags before she had it rebuilt in metal.
Q 18Before Margaret E. Knight's machine, factory-made paper bags had envelope-style bottoms and so could not do what?
Stand upright
Stand upright is what her flat-bottomed design let a bag do, which suited it to bulky goods such as groceries and hardware.
Q 19Which machinist patented Margaret E. Knight's bag machine as his own after seeing her model being built?
Charles Annan
Charles Annan argued that his changes made it a different machine, but the ruling went her way and she received the patent in 1871.
Q 20In which Massachusetts city did Margaret E. Knight take the paper bag factory job that inspired her famous machine?
Springfield
Springfield had the bag factory where she folded bags by hand and decided a machine could do the job better.
Engine design was her last field: the patents began with a steam-driven compound rotary model and kept arriving until the year after she died.
Q 24Margaret E. Knight's household patents of the 1880s included a robe clasp and which tool for cooking at the fire?
A spit
A spit of her design had adjustable forks to grip roasts of different sizes and hold the meat in the best position facing the heat.
Q 25A patent shared by Margaret E. Knight and Harriet M. Macfarland shielded which garment from rain, snow and dirt?
A skirt
A skirt could be slipped inside the shield, a light waterproof bag held up by straps from a waist-belt, to keep its lower part clean.
Q 26In which Connecticut city did Margaret E. Knight and a business partner set up their paper bag company?
Hartford
Hartford housed the firm, but she had no interest in managing it and went back to inventing while it made the bags.
Q 27With no wish to run the bag company she co-founded, Margaret E. Knight took her income from it in which form?
Royalties
Royalties from the bags were capped at $25,000, so the payments ended and she kept selling new inventions to make a living.
Q 28In which Massachusetts town did Margaret E. Knight spend her final years and die in 1914?
Framingham
Framingham was her last home: an 1894 patent gives her address as South Framingham, and she died in the town two decades later.
Q 29Which body honoured Margaret E. Knight with induction more than ninety years after her death?
National Inventors Hall of Fame
National Inventors Hall of Fame induction came in 2006 for the bag machine, the invention the Patent Office had at first refused her because a rival already held the patent.
Q 30To which city did Margaret E. Knight move to refine her bag machine with two machinists before patenting it?
Boston
Boston is the home address printed on her first patent, and she later kept an office downtown while living outside the city.