The real McCoy...

Ever wondered where the phrase “the real McCoy” comes from? I read an article recently about one of the possible origins of this phrase – origins that go much deeper than pop culture and movie references.

Elijah McCoy was an African-Canadian-American, born in Canada in 1844, after his parents escaped from the US through the Underground Railroad. As a young child, he tinkered with things – taking them apart, putting them back together, and trying to understand the “how” of everyday items. As a teenager, he traveled to Scotland for an apprenticeship, and earned a mechanical engineering certification while there. From Scotland, he settled in Michigan, where he could only find work as a fireman and oilman on the Michigan Central Railroad. Part of his job as an oilman involved applying oil to the train every few miles to make sure the train stayed well-greased. It was during this time that he set out to invent a device to improve the train’s efficiency.

McCoy developed a “lubricating cup” that could automatically drip oil onto the axels when necessary, and went on to patent 50 devices dealing with lubricating systems. These types of systems were incredibly beneficial to railroads as they allowed trains to stop less frequently for maintenance work. McCoy did not have access to a great deal of capital, so he often sold his patent rights or gave them to his employer. Despite this, his name became closely linked to the device when other inventors attempted to sell their own versions of the device, and companies instead requested “the real McCoy”.

Source: New York Public Library, under CC0 1.0

Stories like these make me stop and look at the everyday of objects around me with newfound interest. My phone. A calculator. A watch. Simpler still – a stapler, scissors, and those little flaps that open cereal boxes. How many inventors helped shape the modern pencil? How many individual ideas created the lock and key? How much tinkering and nudging led to the three hole punch? And how can we encourage our thousands of scholars to harness that same curiousity that made McCoy deconstruct and construct objects – over and over again – to understand them better? One way we try and do it is by using natural resources and tools in unusual ways – through the resources we build into our lesson plans, through the ingenuity of our teachers, and through the creativity of our own students. Let’s get to it!

-Reshma