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I got my paper back from Dr. Sul­li­van the other night. For some rea­son, as with every­thing in this class the past semes­ter, I’ve been a tad ner­vous when receiv­ing some­thing back that has been graded; it’s just a thing with me, I don’t know why I’m appre­hen­sive about it. And when I got my paper back I saw at the top the grade — a 75. Wow. C+. Awesome…for real.

No, it wasn’t awe­some. It was kinda sucky.

But then I remem­bered that Dr. Sul­li­van has kind of a screwy grad­ing scheme, 100 isn’t always the top score that you can get, so I asked some­one, “What was the top score you could get on this paper?” And they replied, “Seventy-five.”

So I got an A+, a 100%, or as I said, “a per­fect,” and it only took about two weeks and some furi­ous editing.

And he said -

Excel­lent paper. I like the way you pre­sented the three inven­tors in the con­text of a broader pic­ture of inven­tion — and its influ­ence within the African-American experience.

And I feel good about the paper. Very good.

Each of the men dis­cussed in this paper made a rather remark­able con­tri­bu­tion to the sci­en­tific pur­suits, some more last­ing than oth­ers. McCoy’s inven­tion has prob­a­bly been the one with the longest-lasting sig­nif­i­cance. As was true then, if you don’t lubri­cate an engine it will quit work­ing from the fric­tion. All engines, whether they are auto­mo­bile, air­plane or boat, must be lubri­cated in order to remain func­tional. McCoy’s drip cup became the basis for the self-lubricating engines of mod­ern times.

Woods’ Syn­chro­nous Mul­ti­plex Rail­way Tele­graph brought effi­ciency and safety to rail travel at a time when train col­li­sions could be com­mon. With the inven­tion of the tele­phone and fur­ther advance­ments in com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­ogy, the tele­graph became an anti­quated means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Although obso­lete on its own, his inven­tion was one of a seri­ous of steps into a wider world of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that we use today.

Latimer’s inven­tion set the stan­dard in light­ing for the 25 years that fol­lowed. In 1904 William D. Coolidge devel­oped an incan­des­cent light bulb using tung­sten, which extended bulb life far beyond Latimer’s carbon-filament bulb.
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While McCoy’s inven­tions earned mil­lions of dol­lars in profit, lit­tle of that money found its way into his pock­ets. Because he lacked the finan­cial back­ing to man­u­fac­ture his lubri­ca­tors him­self in large num­bers he sold many of his patent rights to investors. In return for this he was given only small amounts that allowed him to con­tinue his research. McCoy was awarded at least 72 patents dur­ing his long life­time but retained own­er­ship of only a few of them. Per­son­ally, he had hap­pi­ness mar­ried to his wife Mary Eleanor for 50 years. At the end of his life McCoy he suf­fered from hyper­ten­sion and senile demen­tia. He died in an infir­mary in Eloise, Michi­gan, on Octo­ber 10, 1929.¹⁵

Woods remained an inde­pen­dent inven­tor his entire life, always remain­ing out­side of the tech­no­log­i­cal main­stream of Bell and Edi­son. The never end­ing scourge of his life became hav­ing to con­stantly defend his patents in court. As peo­ple of the time were always invent­ing it was nat­ural that sev­eral peo­ple could come up with the same idea at roughly the same time. Because of this, the major­ity of Woods’ money went to fight­ing legal dis­putes. After years of being des­ti­tute and pen­ni­less he suf­fered a stroke on Jan­u­ary 30, 1910 at Harlem Hos­pi­tal in New York City – killing him at the young age of 53. Despite his great suc­cess as an inven­tor and amass­ing over 60 patents in total, he had lit­tle to show for it. His sim­ple ground-level head­stone in East Elmhurst, New York reads “Granville T. Woods, Esq, 1856–1910, Elec­tri­cian — Inven­tor.”¹⁶
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Eli­jah McCoy was the most edu­cated of the three. His par­ents, George and Mil­dred, both run­away slaves, fled to Canada from Ken­tucky. When the Cana­dian rebel­lions of 1837 broke out against Great Britain, George sided in the hos­til­i­ties with the British. After the Red River Rebel­lion, as it was called, was quashed by the Crown, George was given 160 acres of farm­land near Colch­ester, Ontario for his loy­alty and ser­vice. Eli­jah was born there on March 27, 1844, one of 12 chil­dren that George and Mil­dred had. When he was three his fam­ily moved back to the U.S., set­tling in Detroit, Michi­gan, and it was in nearby Ypsi­lanti that McCoy would do his invent­ing.
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