Elijah McCoy
Elijah McCoy is a great African-American engineer and inventor who invented the lubrication system for the steam engine.

Elijah McCoy was born on May 2, 1844. Elijah was born in Colchester, Ontario, in Canada. In McCoy’s older teen years, he invented the lubrication system for the steam engines. Over his lifetime he would invent many more inventions. McCoy would eventually receive over sixty patients for his inventions. He died at the age of eighty five, in Detroit, Michigan, on October 10, 1929. He is buried at a cemetery in Warren, Michigan.

McCoy was born on May 2, 1844, in Colchester, Ontario, in Canada. McCoy’s parents were George McCoy and Mildred McCoy. Elijah was a African-American from a family of twelve children. He wa the …show more content…
McCoy married a woman named Ann Elizabeth Stewart at the age of twenty four in 1868. She sadly died four years later. He remarried in 1873 to Mary Eleanor Delaney at the age of twenty nine. She died in 1922 in a car accident and Elijah got very crucial injuries which he never recovered from. Elijah would return home from Scotland after he was a certified engineer to find a engineering job.

He would accept a job at the Michigan Central Railroad as a fireman and oiler. This however wasn't the job he was looking for. Due to the civil war many jobs weren’t available to African-Americans. As the oiler he was responsible for lubricating the train. He would use his training to fix the lubrication system so it wouldn’t have to be checked and lubricated constantly.

Elijah was responsible for many inventions. Elijah had no place to mass produce his inventions at. Elijah's first invention was the lubrication system. Elijah's lubricating device used steam pressure to pump oil were it was needed. Many of his inventions were related to lubrication devices. His invention would allow trains to run constantly without stopping for much