Elijah J. McCoy was born on May 2, 1844, and died on October 10, 1929. He was a Canadian-American engineer who was African American. He created lubrication systems for steam engines. He was born free on the shore of Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada, to parents who had escaped slavery in Kentucky. When he was a child, his family moved to the United States in 1847, and he became a U.S. resident and citizen. In 2012, the United States Patent and Trademark Office honored his inventions by naming its first regional office in Detroit, Michigan, the "Elijah J. McCoy Midwest Regional Patent Office."

Early life

Elijah McCoy was born in 1844 in Colchester, Ontario, to George and Mildred Goins McCoy. At that time, George and Mildred were escaped slaves who had fled from Kentucky to Ontario with the help of people on the Underground Railroad. They arrived in Colchester Township, Essex County, in 1837 through Detroit, which was then part of a region called Upper Canada. Elijah had eleven siblings. Ten of them were born in Ontario, ranging in age from Alfred (born in 1836) to William (born in 1859).

In Upper Canada, schools were separated by race because of a law called the Common Schools Act, which was changed in 1850. Elijah attended schools for Black children in Colchester Township. In 1859, when he was 15 years old, Elijah went to Scotland. There, he worked as an apprentice and later studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he became a mechanical engineer.

According to tax records from 1860, land sale documents, and the 1870 US Census, George McCoy’s family moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan, in the United States between 1859 and 1860. By the time Elijah returned to the United States, his family had settled on a farm owned by John and Maryann Starkweather in Ypsilanti. George used his experience as a tobacconist to start a business selling tobacco and cigars.

Career

When Elijah McCoy arrived in Michigan, he could only find work as a fireman and oiler for the Michigan Central Railroad. In Ypsilanti, he worked in a home-based machine shop, where he created improvements and inventions. He developed an automatic lubricator, a device that added oil to steam engines on trains and ships. He received a patent for this invention in 1872, titled "Improvement in Lubricators for Steam-Engines" (U.S. patent 129,843).

Other similar automatic oilers had been patented before, such as the displacement lubricator, which was already widely used and remained common throughout the 20th century. These lubricators helped railroads by allowing trains to travel faster and more efficiently, with fewer stops for oiling and repairs. By 1899, the Michigan Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics reported that the McCoy lubricator was used on nearly all North American railroads.

McCoy continued to improve his inventions and design new ones. His work was noted in publications like the Railroad Gazette. Many of his patents focused on lubrication systems, including one from 1898 that added a glass "sight-feed" tube to help monitor oil flow (U.S. patent 614,307).

After the year 1900, McCoy gained recognition among Black inventors. In Story of the Negro (1909), Booker T. Washington noted that McCoy had more patents than any other Black inventor at that time. His inventions earned him respect in the Black community, a reputation that continues today. He kept inventing until later in life, receiving up to 57 patents. Most were related to lubrication, but others included a folding ironing board and a lawn sprinkler. Without enough money to mass-produce his lubricators, he often gave his patent rights to employers or sold them to investors. In 1920, near the end of his career, he started the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company.

Regarding the phrase "The real McCoy"

The phrase "the real McCoy," which usually means the genuine item, is often wrongly connected to Elijah McCoy's oil-drip cup invention. A mistaken explanation suggests that railroad engineers avoided fake products by asking if a locomotive had "the real McCoy system." This idea appears in Elijah McCoy's biography at the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In the December 1966 issue of Ebony magazine, an advertisement for Old Taylor Bourbon first linked Elijah McCoy to this phrase, stating, "But the most famous legacy McCoy left his country was his name."

In reality, the phrase "the real McCoy" comes from Scotland and has no connection to Elijah McCoy. It has been used as a nickname for many other people with the surname McCoy.

Marriage and death

In 1873, McCoy married again to Mary Eleanora Delaney. The couple moved to Detroit when McCoy found a job there. Mary McCoy, who died in 1923, helped start the Phillis Wheatley Home for Older African American Men in 1898. Elijah McCoy died on October 10, 1929, at the Eloise Infirmary in Nankin Township, which is now called Westland, Michigan. He was 85 years old and had suffered injuries from a car accident seven years earlier, an accident in which his wife, Mary, also died. Elijah McCoy is buried in Detroit Memorial Park East in Warren, Michigan.

In popular culture

In 1966, an advertisement for Old Taylor bourbon mentioned Elijah McCoy with a photo and the phrase "the real McCoy," ending with the slogan: "But the most famous legacy McCoy left his country was his name."

In 2006, a play titled The Real McCoy by Canadian playwright Andrew Moodie told the story of Elijah McCoy's life, the difficulties he faced as an African American, and the creation of his inventions. The play was first shown in Toronto and later performed in the United States, such as in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 2011, by the Black Rep Theatre.

In her 2001 novel Noughts & Crosses, Malorie Blackman describes a world where races have swapped roles; Elijah McCoy is one of the Black scientists, inventors, and pioneers mentioned in a history class that Blackman never studied in school.

A 1945 song titled "Isn't It Kinda Fun," from the musical State Fair by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, includes the line: "…this is the real McCoy."

Legacy

• In 1974, the state of Michigan placed a historical marker (P25170) at the McCoys' former home at 5720 Lincoln Avenue and at his gravesite.
• In 1975, Detroit honored Elijah McCoy Day by placing a historic marker at the site of his home. The city also renamed a nearby street in his honor.
• In 1994, Michigan placed a historical marker (S0642) at his first workshop in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
• In 2001, McCoy was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Virginia.
• In 2012, the Elijah J. McCoy Midwest Regional U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (the first USPTO satellite office) opened in Detroit, Michigan.
• In 2022, a Google Doodle appeared in Canada and the U.S. to mark his 178th birthday on May 2.