Today (May 2, 1844) is the Birthday of Elijah J. McCoy, the American inventor who invented the lubrication of most steam engines.
Elijah McCoy was born May 2, 1844, in Colchester, Ontario, Canada to George and Mildred McCoy. At the
time, they were fugitive slaves who had escaped from Kentucky to Canada via
helpers through the Underground Railroad. George and Mildred arrived in
Colchester Township, Essex, Ontario Canada in 1837 via Detroit. Elijah McCoy
had 11 siblings. Ten of the children were born in Canada from Alfred (1839) to
William (1859). Based on the 1860 Tax Assessment Rolls, land deeds of sale, and the
1870 USA Census it can be determined the George McCoy family moved to
Ypsilanti, Michigan in 1859–60.
Elijah McCoy was
educated in black schools of Colchester Township due to the 1850 Common Schools
act which segregated the Upper Canadian schools 1850. At age 15, in 1859,
Elijah McCoy was sent to Edinburgh, Scotland for an apprenticeship and study.
After some years, he was certified in Scotland as a mechanical engineer. By the
time he returned, the George McCoy family had established themselves on the
farm of John and Maryann Starkweather in Ypsilanti. George used his skills as a
tobacconist to establish a tobacco and cigar business.
When Elijah McCoy
arrived in Michigan, he could find work only as a fireman and oiler at the
Michigan Central Railroad. In a home-based machine shop in Ypsilanti, Michigan,
McCoy also did more highly skilled work, such as developing improvements and
inventions. He invented an automatic lubricator for oiling the steam engines of
locomotives and ships, patenting it in 1872 as "Improvement in Lubricators
for Steam-Engines" (U.S. Patent 129,843). Similar 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.
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 black contemporaries. Booker T. Washington in Story of the Negro (1909) was recognized as having produced more patents than any other black inventor up
to that time. This creativity gave McCoy an honoured status in the black
community that has persisted to this day. He continued to invent until late in
life, obtaining as many as 57 patents. Most of these were related to
lubrication, but others also included 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.
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 in the field. This popular expression, typically
meaning the real thing, has been incorrectly associated with Elijah McCoy's
oil-drip cup invention. One theory is that railroad engineers looking to avoid
inferior copies would request it by name, and inquire if a locomotive was
fitted with "the real McCoy system". This theory is mentioned in
Elijah McCoy's biography at the National Inventors Hall of Fame. It can be
traced to the December 1966 issue of Ebony in an advertisement for Old Taylor
bourbon whiskey: "But the most famous legacy McCoy left his country was
his name." A 1985 pamphlet printed by the Empak Publishing Company also
notes the phrase's origin but does not elaborate.
Other possibilities for
its origin have been proposed and while it has undoubtedly been applied as an
epithet to many other McCoys, its association with Elijah has become iconic and
remains topical. The expression, "The real McCoy", was first
published in Canada in 1881, but the expression, "The Real McKay",
can be traced to Scottish advertising in 1856. 1966, an ad for Old Taylor
bourbon cited Elijah McCoy with a photo and the expression "the real
McCoy", ending with the tag line, "But the most famous legacy McCoy
left his country was his name." 2006, Canadian playwright Andrew Moodie's
The Real McCoy portrayed McCoy's life, the challenges he faced as an African
American, and the development of his inventions. It was first produced in
Toronto and has also been produced in the United States, for example in Saint
Louis, Missouri, in 2011, where it was performed by the Black Rep Theatre. In
her novel Noughts & Crosses, Malorie Blackman describes a racial dystopia
in which the roles of black and white people are reversed; Elijah McCoy is
among the black scientists, inventors, and pioneers mentioned in a history
class that Blackman "never learned about in school".
Source By: Wikipedia
Information: Ramesh, Assistant Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Trichy.
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