The Real Mccoy: African Americans In The Engineering Field

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Idols, everyone needs them or at least just someone to look up to and admire. People need something to look forward to, aspire towards some kind of goal – basically ambition. For Minorities, specifically African Americans in engineering, role models in the engineering field aren’t glorified. It is not because people feel they are unimportant it is because they just haven’t been informed. For example many people know the cliché The Real McCoy but they don’t know where it comes from; or why it has the connotations it does. Truth is McCoy was an African American mechanical engineer whose parents were runaway slaves in the early 20th century. It almost sounds like an oxymoron, a black engineer at a time when blacks weren’t even allowed to go to …show more content…

Elijah McCoy (1844-1929) was an American inventor born in Colchester, Ontario, Canada, to parents who had escaped from slavery in Kentucky in 1837. McCoy was best known for his inventions of devices used to lubricate heavy machinery automatically. McCoy went to Edinburgh, Scotland, at age 15 and studied mechanical engineering for five years. When he came home he became a railroad fireman on the Michigan State Railroad. Back then steam locomotives had to stop at intervals so that the fireman could oil their pistons, levers, and connecting pins. About 1870, while living in the town of Ypsilanti, Michigan, McCoy began to experiment with automatic lubricators for steam engines. He received his first patent in 1872 for a "lubricator cup" that provided a steady but unregulated flow of oil to a lubricating point. Later that year he patented a lubricator equipped with stopcocks linked to a rod that enabled the oil flow to be controlled. In 1925 McCoy invented a graphite lubricator for steam engines that ran on superheated steam. The graphite was suspended in oil and the design prevented lubricant clogging. McCoy's lubricators were used on locomotives, steamships, and factory machinery. McCoy also patented an ironing table (1874) and a scaffold support (1907).

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