however that at the time Knight patented her paper bag machine, women held an extremely small fraction of patents. Today still, fewer than 10% of primary inventors are female. An obituary described Knight as "woman Edison". Late in her life, Knight was recognized as a leader among women, her achievements held as an example by women's rights activists and suffragettes. She was profiled in several pro-suffrage newspapers and magazines alongside other women inventors as "lady Edisons". She was featured in a 1913 New York Times article, "Women Who Are Inventors," which rebutted the idea of female intellectual inferiority. The 1913 article was written in response to a certain physician's controversial opinion that women had their place in literature but were not inventive; he pointed to the few women recorded as eminent artists, composers, inventors, or even professions thought feminine, such as chefs and fashion designers. The article responded that women had been sequestered in domestic work and denied creative opportunities, and pointed to nine women inventors of the day, Knight foremost among them. A plaque recognizing her as the "first woman awarded a U.S. patent" and holder of 87 U.S. patents hangs on the Curry Cottage at 287 Hollis St in Framingham. However, Knight was not actually the first: either Mary Kies or Hannah Slater holds that honor. The flat-bottomed paper bag machine was Knight's most successful invention. Knight's bags differed somewhat from modern ones. They did not have accordion-folded sides like modern bags, which are therefore more compact in storage and have more defined corners; Luther Crowell patented an accordion-pleated bag in 1872. Another feature developed later was easy unfolding into a square-bottomed shape. Paper bags replaced cloth sacks, crates, and boxes for shopping, and were standard for nearly a century before being replaced by disposable plastic bags, for which a cheap manufacturing process was developed in the 1970s and 80s. Knight was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006. A scaled-down but fully functional patent model of her original bag-making machine is in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Patents Works about her Lynn Ng Quezon: Mattie and the Machine: A Novel. Santa Monica Press, 2022. 264pp. . (Young adult novel for ages 12+.) Emily Arnold McCully: Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 32pp. . (Children's book which was recognized as one of the "best feminist books