The Real McCoy

If you are a mechanical engineer, Black History Month will naturally lead you to think about rail axles.

If you are not a mechanical engineer, this may need some explanation.

In the early decades of rail, lubrication of axle bearings was a tedious and repetitive task.  An oilman would take his oilcan and carefully apply lubricating oil to the train’s bearings.  This needed to be done every few hours, and required rail stock to be brought to standstill.

The most famous oilman of all time was the Canadian, Elijah McCoy (1844-1929). 

Mr. McCoy was a beneficiary of what was then the best professional engineering training in the world.  He had taken advantage of the great Scottish experiment in near-universal, quality education. The Scottish educational system was one of the first to promote formal teaching of the skills needed in professions such as medicine and engineering. To be a Scottish-trained professional in the nineteenth century was to command respect.

However, despite Elijah McCoy’s dual qualifications as a master mechanic and mechanical engineer, when he moved to the land of his parents’ birth (the USA), he was barred from professional work because of his African ancestry. He took the lowly but worthy jobs of oilman and fireman in the then expanding rail industry.

Genius will not be quashed by lack of opportunity, and Elijah McCoy’s humble work as an oilman inspired higher pursuits: He developed a means to consistently and semi-automatically lubricate mechanical equipment. His invention, the lubricating cup, increased bearing life and equipment uptime. 

He continued to invent throughout his long life and went on to obtain 57 patents for various devices, many of which related to tribology (lubrication).  Unfortunately, due to difficulty in raising capital, others gained much of the benefit from his inventiveness.

For many of us, the term the Real McCoy relates to this gentleman’s reputation for quality work and products. 

(There are those that believe the origins of the expression lie in a literary work, but that would be unworthy of consideration for those of us with a technical bent.)

My own experiences with the lubricating cup date back to my first job after graduation in the late 1980’s.  The chemical plant I worked at was pre-war (that’s pre-Second World War to my younger friends) and at least one pump alley had a row of pumps whose bearings were equipped with what we referred to as lubricating bottles. 

Although I may be part of the last generation of engineers to have seen these devices in widespread use, lubricating cups continue to find use in specialized applications – an enduring testament to Mr. McCoy’s creativity.

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