On July 12, 1859, William Goodale received U.S. Patent No. 24734 on a machine for cutting blanks to make paper bags:

These blanks could be folded into paper bags had a flat bottom. The first paper bag making machine was patented by Franci Wolle on October 26, 1852, as U.S. Patent No. 9355, these bags had a tapered end, like an envelope:

It took another inventor, Margarete E. Knight, to put the pieces together and develop a machine that manufactures flat-bottomed paper bags, for which she received U.S. Patent No. 116842, on July 11, 1871: