Elijah McCoy

Inventor

• Born: March 27, 1843 or May 2, 1844
• Birthplace: Colchester, Ontario, Canada
• Died: October 10, 1929
• Place of death: Eloise, Michigan

Canadian American mechanical engineer

McCoy invented more than fifty different devices, most of which improved the operation of locomotives. Many of his inventions automatically dispensed oil to lubricate the moving parts of the locomotive, reducing friction and helping the train run more smoothly.

Primary field: Railway engineering

Primary invention: Automatic lubricator

Early Life

Elijah McCoy (ee-LI-juh mih-KOY) was born in 1843 to George McCoy and Mildred Goins McCoy. Many sources give his birth date as May 2, 1844, but the date of March 27, 1843, appears on his death certificate. He was the third child of the McCoys; they had nine more children.

George and Mildred McCoy had lived in slavery in Kentucky until 1837. That year, they escaped to freedom on the Underground Railroad, the network of hidden paths and safe houses that allowed African Americans to flee to free soil. Like many slaves who had escaped along this system, they settled in Canada, which had no slavery. George McCoy joined the Canadian army and, after completing his service, was rewarded with 160 acres of land in Colchester, a village southeast of Windsor and on the shores of Lake Erie.

While helping out on his parents’ farm, Elijah McCoy completed his elementary schooling and also attended a mechanical school. He apparently showed some aptitude for mechanics, and at age fifteen he was sent to Edinburgh, Scotland, to work as an apprentice to a mechanical engineer. McCoy’s apprenticeship lasted five years. He returned to North America in the mid-1860’s, trained as a master mechanic.

The family returned to the United States, settling in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a small city near Detroit. The Michigan Central Railroad was based in that city. McCoy, with his training as a mechanic, hoped to find work with it.

McCoy was hired by the railroad, but neither as a mechanic nor as an engineer. He was hired as a fireman, whose task it was to shovel coal into the firebox of the locomotive, fueling the fire that produced the energy to move the train. Racial prejudice might well have played a role in McCoy’s being thus underemployed.

Life’s Work

In a steam-powered locomotive, steam produced by the train’s boiler enters large cylinders. The buildup and loss of steam pressure drives pistons to move in and out of the cylinders, and that motion moves the wheels of the train. These moving parts operate under extremely high temperatures. They must be lubricated to prevent the high temperatures and friction from destroying them.

As early as 1850, British inventors had created devices to provide a steady stream of oil to lubricate these parts as they moved. At least one of these devices was used not only in railways there but also elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. It is not clear if such devices were part of the locomotives on which McCoy labored. That is likely, however, as he called his first invention an “improvement in lubricators for steam-engines.”

Working in a makeshift shop when he could find the time, McCoy spent two years developing a system that would regularly distribute oil onto the moving parts to lubricate them. He completed his work in the summer of 1872 and submitted his first patent application to the U.S. Patent Office. On July 23, 1872, he was awarded the patent. As he would do with many of his later inventions, McCoy assigned the rights of patent to both himself and another person who was, perhaps, an official of the railroad. (Companies often require employees who obtain a patent to assign the rights to the company.)

McCoy’s new lubricator was the first of more than fifty patents he would eventually hold. The second came just two months after the first, when McCoy patented an improved model of his self-regulating lubricator. In all, nearly three dozen of McCoy’s patents were lubricators that could be used on trains. His lubricating devices also had applications in other steam engines, such as those driving steamships. Among his few nonrailroad inventions were an ironing board (patented in 1874), a lawn sprinkler (1899), and treads for tires (1915).

As railroad technology advanced, McCoy kept abreast of the changes and invented new devices suited to the newer equipment. In 1872, George Westinghouse invented a new railroad braking system called the air brake. More reliable than earlier railroad brakes, the air brake made it easier to stop trains that were larger and heavier, and that ran faster, than before. McCoy invented several lubricating devices that oiled these powerful brakes, helping them operate smoothly.

Another change came in the early 1900’s, when engineers developed so-called superheater steam engines. In these engines, the steam produced by the boiler is heated again, which enables it to deliver even more energy when released. Superheater locomotives generated much higher temperatures, which made lubricating them both more important and more difficult. McCoy worked on developing a graphite lubricator to help meet this challenge. Graphite—the same material found in pencils—is a solid lubricant that works very well at high temperatures. McCoy’s device suspended graphite in lubricating oil so that the solid would not cause clogs in the machinery. McCoy patented his first graphite lubricator in 1915. He followed over the next few years with improved versions.

McCoy left the Michigan Central Railroad in 1882 and moved to Detroit. There, he worked on his inventions and as a consulting engineer for a company that made lubricators. In 1920, when McCoy was in his mid-seventies, he launched his own company, the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company, based in Detroit. The company made lubricators and other devices of McCoy’s design. He patented his last four lubricators during the 1920’s.

The remaining years of McCoy’s life were marred by tragedy. He had married his first wife, Ann Elizabeth Stewart, in 1868, but she had died in 1872—the year of McCoy’s first patent. He married Mary Eleanor Delaney the following year, and they lived more than fifty years together. Soon after the McCoy company was founded, however, McCoy and his wife were in an auto accident. Mary McCoy never fully recovered from her injuries and died in 1923. McCoy himself weakened, in part because of injuries incurred in the accident. In addition, he suffered from high blood pressure and, eventually, senile dementia. In 1928, as a result of senility, he was placed in an asylum in what is now Westland, Michigan. The following year, he died.

Impact

McCoy was a trained engineer and mechanic who invented several lubricating devices. Some popular writers call him the “father of lubrication,” but other sources dismiss that claim. Still, McCoy can be credited with creating valuable devices that helped railroad locomotives and air brakes function well.

McCoy is often credited in popular literature as the origin of the term “the real McCoy,” said to be a tribute to the reliability of the device he first invented. That claim appears unjustified. Sources do not offer documented evidence of its truth. Also, language scholars say that the origin of the term is unknown. It is variously ascribed to a boxer, a liquor distiller, and several other characters. Also, the phrase appears to predate McCoy and his invention.

The lack of justification for these claims does not diminish McCoy’s achievement. That he was an African American living in a predominantly white society that often showed little respect or regard for blacks makes his accomplishments the more notable. Late in his life, he held more patents than any other African American inventor.

Bibliography

Brodie, James Michael. Created Equal: The Lives and Ideas of Black American Inventors. New York: William Morrow, 1993. Very sketchy information on McCoy. The greatest value in this title is the list of all McCoy’s patents, as well as those by the other inventors treated in the book. Since the list is chronological, however, McCoy’s contributions must be sought using the index.

Haber, Louis. Black Pioneers of Science and Invention. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970. Another brief overview of McCoy’s life. This text offers a useful discussion of types of lubricants, including information on the appropriate applications for each.

James, Portia P. The Real McCoy: African-American Invention and Innovation. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. A brief and highly laudatory account of McCoy’s life and work. An illustration shows a photograph of one of McCoy’s hydrostatic lubricators.

Pirro, D. M., and A. A. Wessol. Lubrication Fundamentals. 2d ed. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2001. A primer on the lubricants and their uses. The text brings the science of lubrication to modern materials and uses.

Sluby, Patricia Carter. The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Sketches McCoy’s life and work. The book’s illustrations include McCoy’s design patent for a lawn sprinkler, in the shape of a turtle. The list of patents in the back of the book collects McCoy’s patents by name, making them easier to study than the list in Brodie’s book.