Elijah McCoy: The Inventor Behind 'The Real McCoy'

Elijah McCoy was born in Colchester, Ontario, to parents who had escaped slavery in Kentucky via the Underground Railroad; the family later moved back to the United States and settled in Michigan. As a young man, McCoy trained as a mechanical engineer in Edinburgh, Scotland — yet on returning to the U.S., the only work he could find was as a railroad fireman, well below what his training qualified him for.

Frustrated by trains that had to stop constantly just to be hand-lubricated, McCoy invented an automatic lubricator in 1872 that used steam pressure to oil moving parts continuously, without ever halting the train. It worked so well, and was so widely and poorly imitated by competitors, that customers reportedly started asking specifically for "the real McCoy" — a phrase that outlived the machine and entered the language as shorthand for the genuine, best version of anything.

What he left behind

• Invented and patented an automatic steam-engine lubricator in 1872, letting trains be oiled while still moving
• His lubricator was adopted across other industries, including drilling and mining
• Later patented additional inventions, including a portable ironing board and a lawn sprinkler

The exact origin of the phrase "the real McCoy" is disputed — some trace it to McCoy's lubricator, others to an unrelated 19th-century whisky brand. Widely associated with him, if not definitively confirmed.

What most bios leave out

McCoy's oil-cup wasn't his only invention — over his career he filed more than 50 patents, most of them refinements to industrial lubrication that never got a catchy nickname the way the first one did. Much of his later life and savings went into a less celebrated fight: defending his patents in court against companies that copied his designs outright, a costly and draining battle for an independent Black inventor going up against much larger firms with far deeper pockets.

His personal life carried its own hardship. His first wife died just a few years into their marriage. His second wife, Mary, was seriously injured alongside him in a car accident in 1922 and died from her injuries; McCoy himself never fully recovered. He spent his final years in declining health, his savings largely spent, and died in 1929 at a care facility in Michigan — a quieter, harder ending than the folk-hero status "the real McCoy" might suggest.

About this set

McCoy's card is one of six in The Patternmakers, part of the Continuum: Past | Present | Becoming postcard series. The Patternmakers gathers scholars and scientists who broke into fields that were never built with them in mind.

Shop Elijah McCoy's postcard pack or browse the full Continuum collection.