![]() This brought him under the instruction of William Cullen who in 1747 “had instituted the first lectures in chemistry”, according to an article on Black prepared by the University. His parents were both Scots who were involved in the wine trade.Īt 12 he was sent to school in Belfast and at 16 entered the University of Glasgow – at first studying arts but later switching to medicine. Similarly, a paper by John B West published by The American Physiological Society in 2014 says: “The discovery of carbon dioxide by Joseph Black marked a new era of research on the respiratory gases.”īlack – one of 15 children – was born in Bordeaux, France, on 16 April 1728. The most noteworthy, as Cosmos acknowledged a decade ago in an article about “17 molecules that changed the world”, was “the discovery and isolation of carbon dioxide… in the 1750s”. His work on the modern steam engine kick-started the entire Industrial Revolution.” Or this, from the introduction to an article published by the Interesting Engineering website: “James Watt was one of the most important engineers and scientists in history. ![]() Credit: Wikipedia Commonsįor example, this from the German MTM Association (Methods-Time Measurement): “When James Watt had his low-pressure steam engine patented in 1769, he ushered in the greatest technological revolution in history.” ![]() Maybe the most generous interpretation is to say they were all the real thing.Joseph Black was an influential scientist and teacher. MacKay and Co., a distiller which used “the real Mackay” as a promotional slogan. However, parallel mythologies surround a number of other figures of the late 19th and early 20th century.” There’s Charlie “Kid” McCoy and Joseph McCoy and G. “Many have suggested that the phrase became common parlance among mechanical engineers who refused to install knockoff lubricators onto their locomotives, demanding instead the original McCoy design. Although some modern sources have attributed the phrase to him, the Canadian encyclopedia says the phrase’s origin story is unclear. But his most widely known legacy-the "real McCoy" phrase-is less certain. In recent years, McCoy’s legacy was honored when he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and when a patent office in Detroit was named after him. Unfortunately, he was greatly injured in a 1922 accident that also killed his wife, and, writes the railway hall of fame, he died in 1929 after suffering financial, physical and mental problems. When he was 72 years old, in 1916, he patented the “graphite lubricator” which was a mixture of graphite and oil that worked well in the period’s “superheater” locomotives, but he didn’t establish his own company to make some of his inventions until 1920. He moved to Detroit from Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1882 with Mary McCoy, his wife, the railway hall of fame writes, where he consulted for firms and continued to come up with ideas. McCoy used some of the money from ventures associated with his first patent to continue inventing, coming up with mostly railway-related inventions but also an improved ironing board. “The device was not particularly complicated so it was easy for competitors to produce similar devices. However, McCoy’s device was an original development and, apparently, had the best reputation.” That may well have been how the phrase “the real McCoy" became popular, the university writes. “McCoy’s patented device was quickly adopted by the railroads, by those who maintained steamship engines and many others who used large machinery,” writes the University of Michigan. Then in 1872, McCoy invented and patented an automatic oiling device for the moving parts of steam locomotives, colloquially known as the “oil-drip cup.” Although McCoy was educated as an engineer, writes the Canadian Railway Hall of Fame, the discriminatory management of the railroad thought a black man couldn’t be an engineer, and he was hired to work in the boiler room of trains as a fireman. He eventually came back to the States and ended up working for the Michigan Central Railroad. Elijah was educated in the city and in Edinburgh, Scotland. ![]() After living in Ontario for several years, the family moved to Detroit following the Civil War. McCoy was born on this day in 1843 to George and Emilia McCoy, former slaves from Kentucky who had escaped to Canada on the Underground Railroad. Like many other black inventors, McCoy faced racism and exclusion in his work, but his lengthy career was a successful one. His inventions, which were not headline-making outside the field of steam engines, were so associated with quality and good function that people began using “the real McCoy” to refer to quality products. The inventor held 57 United States patents, mostly related to the railway.
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