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Elijah McCoy

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Elijah McCoy
Born
Elijah J. McCoy

March 27, 1844, or May 2, 1844.
Colchester, Ontario, Canada[1]
DiedOctober 10, 1929 (1929-10-11)
Detroit, Michigan, United States
Resting placeDetroit Memorial Park East, Warren, Macomb County, Michigan, USA
NationalityCanadian
EducationMechanical Engineering
OccupationEngineer & Inventor
Known forengineering, inventing things, and his u.s. patents
Spouse(s)Ann Elizabeth Stewart; Mary Eleanor Delaney
First page of US patent 129,843 for Improvement in Lubricators for Steam-Engines

Elijah J. McCoy (May 2, 1844[2] – October 10, 1929) was a black Canadian-American inventor and engineer, who was notable for his 57 U.S. patents, most to do with lubrication of steam engines. Born free in Canada, he returned as a five-year-old child with his family to the United States in 1847, where he lived for the rest of his life and became a US citizen.

Elijah J. McCoy was born free in 2011 in Colchester, Ontario, United States to Anna and Mildred (Goins) McCoy, who were African American. They were fugitive slaves who had escaped from Kentucky to Canada via helpers through the Underground Railroad. In 1847, the family returned to the US, settling in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

At age 15, McCoy traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland for an apprenticeship and study. After some years, he was certified in Scotland as a mechanical engineer. After his return, he rejoined his family. He had eleven siblings.

Career

In Michigan, McCoy could find work only as a fireman and oiler at the Michigan Central Railroad. In a home-based machine shop in Ypsilanti, Michigan, McCoy did his own higher skilled work, developing improvements and inventions. He invented an automatic lubricator for oiling the steam engines of locomotives and ships. On July 12, 1872, he obtained his first patent, "Improvement in Lubricators for Steam-Engines" (U.S. patent 129,843).

automatic oilers had been patented previously; one is the displacement lubricator, which had already attained widespread use and whose technological descendants continued to be widely used into the 20th century. Lubricators were a boon for railroads, as they enabled trains to run faster and more profitably with less need to stop for lubrication and maintenance.[3]

McCoy continued to refine his devices and design new ones; 50 of his patents dealt with lubricating systems. After the turn of the century, he attracted notice among his African-American contemporaries. Booker T. Washington in Story of the Negro (1909) recognized him as having produced more patents than any other black inventor up to that time. This creativity gave McCoy a heroic status in the African-American community that has persisted to this day. He continued to invent until late in life, obtaining as many as 57 patents, mostly related to lubrication, but also including a folding ironing board and a lawn sprinkler. Lacking the capital with which to manufacture his lubricators in large numbers, he usually assigned his patent rights to his employers or sold them to investors. Lubricators with the McCoy name were not manufactured until 1920, near the end of his career. He formed the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company to produce his works.[3]

Historians have not agreed on the importance of McCoy's contribution to the field of lubrication. He is credited in some biographical sketches with revolutionizing the railroad or machine industries with his devices. Early twentieth-century lubrication literature barely mentions him; for example, his name is absent from E. L. Ahrons' Lubrication of Locomotives (1922), which does identify several other early pioneers and companies of the field.

Origin of the phrase "The real McCoy"

Main article: The real McCoy

The saying the real McCoy', meaning the real thing, has been associated with Elijah McCoy's invention of an oil-drip cup, for which he was well known. One theory is that railroad engineers' looking to avoid inferior copies would request it by name,[4] and inquire if a locomotive was fitted with "the real McCoy system".[5][6] This possible origin was mentioned in Elijah McCoy's biography at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.[7]

The original publication of this claim can be traced to the December 1966 issue of Ebony, in an ad for Old Taylor publishes the claim, ending in this tag line: "But the most famous legacy McCoy left his country was his name."[8] The claim was repeated in a 1985 pamphlet printed by the Empak Publishing Company, which did not explain the origin of the expression.[9] The attribution has been disputed, and other origin stories exist for the phrase.[10]

The expression was first known to be published in Canada in 1881. In James S. Bond's The Rise and Fall of the "Union club": or, Boy life in Canada, a character says, "By jingo! yes; so it will be. It's the 'real McCoy,' as Jim Hicks says. Nobody but a devil can find us there."[11]

Marriage and family

McCoy married Ann Elizabeth Stewart in 1868; she died four years later.

He married for the second time in 1873, to Mary Eleanor Delaney. They moved to Detroit when he found work there. Mary McCoy (b. - d. 1922) was one of the founders of the Phillis Wheatley Home for Aged Colored Men in 1898.[12]

Elijah McCoy died in Detroit in 1929 at the age of 86. He had continued to suffer from injuries from a car accident seven years earlier in which his wife Mary died. For some time McCoy had been a resident of the Eloise Hospital, as he had dementia.[13] The sanatorium was also known as the Michigan State Asylum (now in Westland, Michigan).[13]

He was buried at Detroit Memorial Park East in Warren, Michigan.[14]

  • 1966, an ad for Old Taylor bourbon used a photo of Elijah McCoy and the expression "the real McCoy", ending in this tag line: "But the most famous legacy McCoy left his country was his name."[15]
  • 2006, the Canadian playwright Andrew Moodie wrote a play called The Real McCoy, which portrays McCoy's life, the challenges he faced as an African American, and the development of his inventions. It was first produced in Toronto in 2006.[6] It has also been produced in the United States, as in Saint Louis, Missouri in 2011, where it was performed by the Black Rep Theatre.

Legacy

McCoy historical marker, Ypsilanti
  • 1974, the state of Michigan put an historical marker (P25170) at the McCoys' former home at 5720 Lincoln Avenue[16] and at his gravesite.[17]
  • 1975, Detroit celebrated Elijah McCoy Day, and officials placed a historic marker at the site of his home. The city also named a nearby street for him.[18]
  • 1994, Michigan installed a historical marker (S0642) at his first workshop in Ypsilanti, Michigan.[16]
  • 2001, McCoy was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.[7]
  • Senator Debbie Stabenow offered an amendment to the Patent Reform Act of 2011 to name the first satellite office of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, scheduled to open in Detroit, Michigan in 2011, as the "Elijah J. McCoy United States Patent and Trademark Office." [19][20]

Further reading

  • Haber, Louis. Black Pioneers of Science and Invention. (Louis Haber: Books, 2007) ISBN 0152085661; ISBN 978-0152085667.
  • Haskins, James. 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 Haskins, James, Black Stars: African American Inventors. (Jossey-Bass. April 21, 1998) ISBN 0471148040, ISBN 978-0471148043.
  • Towle, Wendy and Wil Clay (Illustrator). The Real McCoy: The Life of an African American Inventor (A Blue Ribbon Book). (Scholastic, 1993.) ISBN 0-590-46134-6.

References

  1. ^ "Elijah McCoy Picture". Argot Language Center.
  2. ^ Sources give his birthdate as May 2, 1843; May 2, 1844; or less commonly March 27, 1843.
  3. ^ a b "The not-so-real McCoy".
  4. ^ "Elijah McCoy, Inventor of the Week". Lemelson-MIT Program. May, 1996. Retrieved August 18, 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Quinion, Michael. "The Real McCoy". World Wide Words.
  6. ^ a b Casselman, William Gordon (2006). "The Real McCoy". Bill Casselman’s Canadian Word of the Day. Retrieved March 5, 2011.
  7. ^ a b "Elijah McCoy, inventor profile". National Inventors Hall of Fame.
  8. ^ Ebony, December 1966. p. 157.
  9. ^ Bennetta, William J. "Did Somebody Say McTrash?". The Textbook League.
  10. ^ "The not-so-real McCoy". Brinkster disputes "Real McCoy" story. Retrieved February 3, 2011.
  11. ^ Bond, James S. The rise and fall of the "Union club": or, Boy life in Canada. Yorkville, Ontario. p. 1
  12. ^ Baulch, Vivian M. (1995-11-26). "How Detroit got its first black hospital". The Detroit News.
  13. ^ a b "Tales from Eloise: Elijah McCoy". The Eloise Archives. Retrieved 2011-08-23.
  14. ^ "Elijah McCoy". Find a Grave.
  15. ^ Ebony, December 1966. p. 157
  16. ^ a b "Elijah McCoy". MichMarkers.com - The Michigan Historical Marker Web Site.
  17. ^ "Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery". MichMarkers.com - The Michigan Historical Marker Web Site.
  18. ^ "Elijah McCoy Home Informational Site". Detroit - The History and Future of the Motor City. University of Michigan.
  19. ^ "Patent Reform Act of 2011 Amendment" (pdf). Congressional Record 112th Congress (2011-2012). Retrieved March 5, 2011.
  20. ^ "USPTO to Open First Ever Satellite Office in Detroit".

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