All posts in History

The three inven­tors of focus didn’t have many advan­tages from life in gen­eral. Cer­tainly not what you would expect from men who went on to be ground­break­ing inven­tors. Two were the chil­dren of escaped slaves, the third of mixed race at a time when this was entirely socially unac­cept­able. How­ever, despite what their par­ents were able to pro­vide for them, each man lever­aged his ideas and intel­lect to spur progress and invent things that would change the world for the better.

Eli­jah McCoy
Eli­jah McCoy’s great inven­tion, the one that would secure his name in the Amer­i­can lex­i­con, was some­thing that solved a com­mon prob­lem among all crews of trains – lubri­cat­ing engine parts. In 1870 McCoy took a job with the Michi­gan Cen­tral Rail­road as a fire­man – part of his duties included oil­ing the engine. Crews would often have to stop their loco­mo­tives, some­time for hours on end, and oil the engine to pre­vent over­heat­ing. This caused pas­sen­ger and mail delays and stretched long loco­mo­tive travel times even longer. ³

McCoy thought of a way to erad­i­cate this prob­lem. As he said in his patent appli­ca­tion, in flow­ery lan­guage, “To all whom it may con­cern: Be it known that I, ELIJAH MCCOY, of the city of Ypsi­lanti, in the county of Washt­e­naw and the state of Michi­gan, have invented cer­tain new and use­ful Improve­ments in Lubri­ca­tors; and I do hereby declare that the fol­low­ing is a full, clear, and exact descrip­tion thereof, ref­er­ence being had to the accom­pa­ny­ing draw­ing and to the let­ters of ref­er­ence marked thereon, which form a part of this specification.

“The nature of my inven­tion con­sists in the con­struc­tion and arrange­ment of a lubri­ca­tor for steam-cylinders, as will be here­inafter more fully set forth.”

McCoy then set about explain­ing his incred­i­bly sim­ple but rev­o­lu­tion­ary device: A cov­ered cup, con­tain­ing lubri­cat­ing oil, with a hol­low stem at the bot­tom that had a valve that would be forced upward as steam pres­sure exerted force on the valve. When the steam opened the valve lubri­cat­ing oil would drip out of the cup, dis­pens­ing oil to the engine parts requir­ing the oil.⁴

McCoy took a prob­lem that had plagued engi­neers for decades and solved it with a device so sim­ple yet so invalu­able that com­peti­tors began to copy his inven­tion, lead­ing dis­cern­ing peo­ple with a want for the true arti­cle to ask for “the Real McCoy”.⁵

As a 1903 The Col­ored Amer­i­can put it in an arti­cle about African-American inventors –

“At the head of the list stands the name of Eli­jah McCoy, of Detroit. He has suc­ceeded in plac­ing his lubri­ca­tors on many of the steam-car and steam­boat engines in the North­west, and also on some of the Trans-Atlantic steam­ers. And these are said to net him a hand­some roy­alty.”⁶

I fin­ished the paper. Turned out to be good (thanks to Kim’s edit­ing) and my pre­sen­ta­tion went over pretty well and I only stopped once to look down at my notes. After cram­ming to fin­ish this I felt like I’d stud­ied for an exam I knew it so well.

You’ll notice super­scripts through­out the posts. Those are for the end­notes that were part of the hard copy. I will not be includ­ing that in this; no point in doing that.

Also, if you find this paper and copy it, believe me, there are ways to find you. The Inter­net is a glo­ri­ous and won­der­ful place, and I’m post­ing my paper because I’m proud of it, but that works two ways — me being nice, and you, the reader, play­ing nice too.

And so with­out fur­ther ado.…
Eli­jah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inven­tors of the 19th Cen­tury
African-Americans down through the cen­turies, whether slave or free, impro­vised and cre­ated tools and machines that helped them either in the fields or in the cities of the United States dur­ing the Nine­teenth Cen­tury. As The Col­ored Amer­i­can put it Novem­ber 14, 1903 –

“It should be borne in mind that the great indus­trial bur­den in the South fell almost wholly upon the Negro slaves, not only in agri­cul­ture and domes­tic labor, but in mechan­i­cal pur­suits as well: so that through his expe­ri­ences in field and work­shop the Negro laborer was enabled – indeed forced – to devise many an new prac­ti­cal con­trivance for min­i­miz­ing the exact­ness of man­ual labor.“¹

On the plan­ta­tions of the South, where African-Americans of many skills and strengths were often grouped together, new tools and machines were cre­ated that helped ease the back-breaking day to day labor. In the cities, mind-numbingly tedious labor, such as the con­struc­tion of shoes, was made sim­ple and quick by inven­tors such as Jan Ernst Matzeliger, who’s shoe last­ing machine rev­o­lu­tion­ized the shoe indus­try, dras­ti­cally cut­ting pro­duc­tion time and man hours.

As early as the late 19^th cen­tury African-American inven­tors were begin­ning to be rec­og­nized for their accom­plish­ments. “The oft-repeated accu­sa­tion against the Negro that he is an imi­ta­tor and not an inven­tor does not stand the test when brought under the lime­light of inves­ti­ga­tion,” claimed a reporter in 1908 in the Seat­tle Repub­li­can. Which was true. Accord­ing to the Gov­ern­men­tal Patent Office at that time, it was esti­mated that of the 900,000 total patent rights that had been granted in the his­tory of the office about 1,000 of those came from African-American inven­tors. Henry E. Baker, one of the first Black Patent Exam­in­ers in the U.S. Patent and Trade­mark Office said, “…the records of this office do not dis­tin­guish between inven­tors as to race but only to nation­al­ity (but black inventors)…not only served to raise the stan­dard of the inven­tors mate­ri­ally and socially but (have) greatly aided in increas­ing the facil­i­ties of civ­i­liza­tion.“²

African-Americans, often with­out the ben­e­fits of higher edu­ca­tion, were start­ing to make noted, valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to the Amer­i­can land­scape, even if they as a peo­ple were still not fully accepted as social or intel­lec­tual equals in white Amer­ica. This paper will focus on the back­grounds, work and inven­tions of three influ­en­tial African-American Inven­tors of the 19^th Cen­tury inven­tors: Lewis Latimer, Eli­jah McCoy and Granville Woods. It will address their inven­tions, the social and racial cli­mate at the time and how their race impacted their oppor­tu­ni­ties and edu­ca­tions.
Next time, their inventions.

So the paper is com­ing along but not fast enough. I have 10 pages but need 12–15. And now I’m get­ting ner­vous. I don’t know why, it’s just that I’m not done yet, and I did pro­cras­ti­nate (who doesn’t?) but I’m try­ing to make up for lost time now. I was sick for days and the thing is due on Thurs­day. With it being due on Thurs­day I’ve got a bunch of stuff writ­ten and I’m try­ing to make it cohe­sively come together. McCoy, Latimer and Woods, you are frustration!

I have a term paper com­ing up for my Con­tested Images:  Race, Reli­gion, and Sci­ence in Amer­i­can class and I thought I’d post the syn­op­sis here. I used to write a lot about his­tor­i­cal top­ics on my site and its been awhile since I last wrote about his­tory. Maybe when I’m done with the paper I’ll update this post and append the actual report (or maybe not, it’ll be about 15 pages long). Any­way, here’s the thumb­nail sketch of it -

The end of the 19th Cen­tury was a tur­bu­lent time for African-Americans. The Civil War, hav­ing just recently con­cluded, was still an open wound in parts of the United States, and the lin­ger­ing feel­ings and racism bled into the Recon­struc­tion period and beyond. Dur­ing this time, a hand­ful of men rose above the dif­fi­cul­ties to cre­ate life-changing inven­tions that would mod­ify the future of entire indus­tries. This paper will focus on the back­grounds, work and inven­tions of three influ­en­tial inven­tors: Lewis Latimer, Eli­jah McCoy and Granville Woods.

Woods’ work in tele­phony and teleg­ra­phy, McCoy’s work in engine lubri­ca­tion and Latimer’s work in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of car­bon fil­a­ments for Edison’s light bulbs made them fore­run­ners in their fields for which they received praise and recog­ni­tion in a time when such adu­la­tion for African-Americans was rare. McCoy’s inven­tion lead users to coin the phrase “the real McCoy”. Latimer’s work was so impor­tant to the field of elec­tric light tech­nol­ogy that he was given one (out of twenty-eight) of the cov­eted spots in the Edi­son Pio­neers, a group that rep­re­sented the high­est honor in the elec­tri­cal field. Woods, known in some cir­cles at the time as the “Black Edi­son”, pio­neered dif­fer­ent uses of teleg­ra­phy, allow­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion between sta­tion houses and mov­ing trains.

This paper will cover what these inven­tors were famous (and not so famous) for, how their back­grounds as the chil­dren of for­mer slaves impacted their oppor­tu­ni­ties and edu­ca­tions, and how their race played a part in their noto­ri­ety as well as how their inven­tions changed our lives.