Elijah Mccoy
Born May 2, 1844 (Colchester, Ontario, Canada)
Died October 10, 1929 (Eloise, Michigan)
Inventor
Engineer
American inventor Elijah McCoy patented a lubricating (reducing friction between two solid objects) device for locomotive engines that was widely used in the railroad industry for more than forty years. McCoy's oil cup, which dripped a steady flow of oil into an engine while it was running, was a major time-saver for the train engineers of the era. Previously, they had to halt the train and manually oil the engine and its parts to keep it running smoothly. McCoy had once done that very job himself, and his idea came from that experience. He never earned much money from this or from any of his other inventions, however, and died penniless.
Educated in Scotland
McCoy was born in 1844, in Colchester, Ontario, in Canada. His parents were escaped slaves from a Kentucky plantation. They had made it to Canada, where slavery was illegal, by using the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses that helped fugitive slaves reach freedom in the free states and Canada. He was one of twelve children in his family, and they As a youngster McCoy liked to take things apart to see how they worked, and he usually managed to reassemble whatever it was and put it back in working order.
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