Talk:Elijah McCoy

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The real McCoy

None of the sources listed enumerated or proposed McCoy as the inspiration for the term, they actually were articles determining that this is completely false. unless someone can find a definitive source stating this McCoy was the inspiration for the phrase it needs to be left out of this article. --Dcowboys3109 (talk) 20:12, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Elijah McCoy is dead

This man was born in 1845 according to the article. I assume he died along the way somewhere? -戴&#30505sv

This man was not born in 1844 according to the article. and he died in 1929. He died from injuries in a car accident that his Wife was killed in seven years earlier. --170.211.79.126 18:55, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)Matthew Center

massive edit Feb 24, 2005

Is the edit on Feb 24, 2005 by 68.75.164.77 legitimate? It seems like a lot of information has been completely removed.

It has since been reverted, in my opinion correctly. -- Infrogmation 22:41, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

someone had vandalized the biography, I've just fixed it.

Me too. The link was changed by 198.209.35.250 to an invalid one. But I'm not sure that I know why that link is in the bibliography (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/tl1865.html). The entry says "Civil War and Reconstruction" but the page itself says "Time Line of The Civil War, 1865". I see no mention of McCoy there. DHR 22:27, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fact Checking Needed

The article says the father fought in the Riel Rebellion (1869 or 1885 according to the link) earning a land grant. One presumes this must have happened before George was 3 (1847), when the family moved back to the US. The sequence just doesn't work (Riel was born in the same year as George or one year later).

This mistake also appears in http://www.africawithin.com/bios/elijah_mccoy.htm . In this article, the date of the Riel Rebellion is put as 1837. There was a rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada in that year 1837 Rebellion.

I wonder how this mistake has flowed.

I would not correct this obvious mistake without knowing the right information. Changing an obvious error to a plausible error isn't an improvement.

George would have been born in Canada West. Ontario didn't exist until 1867. -- DHR 05:54, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, because Canada West was not a political entity according to its article. Rmhermen 17:58, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a rule that it must be a political entity? At the time, all knew what Canada West meant. I think that I've seen it in postal addresses of the time. I've changed Canada West to Canada West, Province of Canada in the hope that this conforms to the convention. The actual edit you made was to change Upper Canada to Province of Canada -- not what you intended. DHR 04:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm new to editing, so I might be confused, but Rmhermen's last edit does not look like an improvement to me. Information is removed. That information seems correct, interesting, and relevant. I'd like to understand why this was done. DHR 07:33, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This was exactly the change I intended as Province of Canada was the legal entity at the time of his birth - not Upper Canada, which had ceased to exist before he was born. As to the use of informal areas, it is generally not done. I don't know what year his parents fled and so can't tell "where" they fled to. Rmhermen 19:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The birth year was just changed from 1844 to 1843. At the bottom of the article there is still a link to 1844 births. I've seen both mentioned on the web. Interestingly, I've only seen May 2 as his birthday. Which year is correct? DHR 19:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is probably unknown. One site says: "The date of McCoy's birth is not known; various sources give it as March 27, 1843; May 2, 1843; and May 2, 1844." Brittanica uses 1843, Encarta 1844. We should probably add a weasel statement. Rmhermen 22:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's split pretty evenly between 1843 and 1844. However, most of the references I have consulted cannot even be considered secondary sources. I have yet to find a scholarly biography of McCoy. One textbook (Holtzapple and Reece, Foundations of Engineering) gets around the DOB issue altogether by saying that he "was born in the early 1840s". If it's an important issue, we should note the controversy explicitly. --MarkSweep (call me collect) 00:55, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The reference to "The Real McCoy" is in fact a reference to a William McCoy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._McCoy) who sold booze from ships anchored outside of US territorial waters during prohibition. Unlike other rum runners, who sold inferior product in order to capitalize on their contraband, McCoy was known for having the finest quality product. If a bootlegger said he had "The Real McCoy", it meant he had a premium spirit.

It's now clear that the phrase "The Real McCoy" may have applied to any McCoy who had something meaning or substantial to offer. I believe that it applied to everyone mentioned herein. Who ever knows for sure where a cliche begins. Tom 03/21/08

No, it is now clear the phrase can be removed from this entry as it has nothing to do with the inventor. Koalorka (talk) 02:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just a list concerning Further reading

Your justification was wrong. I was not whimsical in the selection of the material, and actually went to some effort to compile it.

When you put the word "just" or "mere" in front of anything, you can trivialize it. I once encountered an administrative opinion where that writer asked, "Is mere conviction of a felony reason to remove a sitting judge." I had never ever thought of putting those words together in that form.

You dismissed this as "just a list." Evidently you have not bothered to look at (or otherwise examine) the content of the books, which have specific subject matter pertaining to Elijah McCoy. As of the initial entry, this list did not exist in this form anywhere else on the internet. Indeed, I went to the trouble of putting in the ISBN numbers, so that the "list" could be helpful to our esteemed readers, as they could then find it in bookstores and libraries all over the world.

Haber, Louis. Black Pioneers of Science and Invention. {Louis Haber: Books, 2007.) ISBN 0152085661; ISBN 978-0152085667.
Haskens, Jim. Outward Dreams: Black Inventors and Their Inventions. (Walker, 1991.) ISBN 9780802769930.
Hayden, Robert C. Nine Black American Inventors. (21st Century, 1997.) 171 pages ISBN 0805021337; ISBN 978-0805021332.
Klein, Aaron E. The Hidden Contributors: Black Scientists and Inventors in America. (DoubleDay, October 1971) ISBN 0385006411, ISBN 978-0385006415.
Moodie, Andrew, The Real McCoy. ISBN 9780887549021
Sullivan, Otha and Haskens, Jim, Black Stars: African American Inventors. (Jossey-Bass. April 21 1998) ISBN 0471148040, ISBN 978-0471148043.
Towle, Wendy. The Real McCoy: The Life of an African American Inventor. (Scholastic, 1993.) ISBN 0-590-46134-6.

It would be impolitic for me to say that your edit was "just an edit" or "mere opinion." I do not want to be insulting, so I will contain the urge to say those things, as we all need to work together to create a better encyclopedia for our potential readers.

However, I would urge my fellow editors to think about it. I am sure that once you exam the subject matter and give it some due consideration and thought, your exercise of reason will support the inclusion of this material, and not its exclusion. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 21:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC) Stan[reply]

This article needs to be semi-protected again

As soon as the last semi protection lifted, we had a recurrence of the prior problem. Perhaps we should go to WP:AIV. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 14:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC) Stan[reply]