Talk:Elijah McCoy

message: This man was born in 1845 according to the article. I assume he died along the way somewhere? -戴眩sv
This man was not born in 1844 according to the article. and he died in 1929. He died from injuries in a car accident that his Wife was killed in seven years earlier.
--170.211.79.126 18:55, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Elijah McCoy is dead

message: someone had vandalized the biography, I've just fixed it.
Me too.  The link was changed by 198.209.35.250 to an invalid one.  But I'm not sure that I know why that link is in the bibliography (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/tl1865.html).  The entry says "Civil War and Reconstruction" but the page itself says "Time Line of The Civil War, 1865".  I see no mention of McCoy there.  DHR 22:27, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: The article says the father fought in the Riel Rebellion (1869 or 1885 according to the link) earning a land grant.  One presumes this must have happened before George was 3 (1847), when the family moved back to the US.  The sequence just doesn't work (Riel was born in the same year as George or one year later).
This mistake also appears in http://www.africawithin.com/bios/elijah_mccoy.htm .  In this article, the date of the Riel Rebellion is put as 1837.  There was a rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada in that year 1837 Rebellion.
I wonder how this mistake has flowed.
I would not correct this obvious mistake without knowing the right information.  Changing an obvious error to a plausible error isn't an improvement.
George would have been born in Canada West.  Ontario didn't exist until 1867.
--
DHR 05:54, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, because Canada West was not a political entity according to its article. Rmhermen 17:58, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Is there a rule that it must be a political entity?  At the time, all knew what Canada West meant.  I think that I've seen it in postal addresses of the time.  I've changed Canada West to Canada West, Province of Canada in the hope that this conforms to the convention.  The actual edit you made was to change Upper Canada to Province of Canada -- not what you intended. DHR 04:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This was exactly the change I intended as Province of Canada was the legal entity at the time of his birth - not Upper Canada, which had ceased to exist before he was born. As to the use of informal areas, it is generally not done. I don't know what year his parents fled and so can't tell "where" they fled to. Rmhermen 19:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: It is probably unknown. One site says: "The date of McCoy's birth is not known; various sources give it as March 27, 1843; May 2, 1843; and May 2, 1844." Brittanica uses 1843, Encarta 1844. We should probably add a weasel statement. Rmhermen 22:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's split pretty evenly between 1843 and 1844. However, most of the references I have consulted cannot even be considered secondary sources. I have yet to find a scholarly biography of McCoy. One textbook (Holtzapple and Reece, Foundations of Engineering) gets around the DOB issue altogether by saying that he "was born in the early 1840s". If it's an important issue, we should note the controversy explicitly. --MarkSweep (call me collect) 00:55, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fact Checking Needed 

message: Your justification was wrong.  I was not whimsical in the selection of the material, and actually went to some effort to compile it.
When you put the word "just" or "mere" in front of anything, you can trivialize it.  I once encountered an administrative opinion where that writer asked, "Is mere conviction of a felony reason to remove a sitting judge."  I had never ever thought of putting those words together in that form.
You dismissed this as "just a list."  Evidently you have not bothered to look at (or otherwise examine) the content of the books, which have specific subject matter pertaining to Elijah McCoy.  As of the initial entry, this list did not exist in this form anywhere else on the internet. Indeed, I went to the trouble of putting in the ISBN numbers, so that the "list" could be helpful to our esteemed readers, as they could then find it in bookstores and libraries all over the world.
*Haber, Louis. Black Pioneers of Science and Invention. {Louis Haber: Books, 2007.) ; .
*Haskens, Jim. Outward Dreams: Black Inventors and Their Inventions. (Walker, 1991.) .
*Hayden, Robert C. Nine Black American Inventors. (21st Century, 1997.) 171 pages ; .
*Klein, Aaron E. The Hidden Contributors: Black Scientists and Inventors in America. (DoubleDay, October 1971) , .
*Moodie, Andrew, The Real McCoy.  
*Sullivan, Otha and Haskens, Jim, Black Stars: African American Inventors. (Jossey-Bass. April 21 1998) , .
*Towle, Wendy. The Real McCoy: The Life of an African American Inventor. (Scholastic, 1993.) .
It would be impolitic for me to say that your edit was "just an edit" or "mere opinion."  I do not want to be insulting, so I will contain the urge to say those things, as we all need to work together to create a better encyclopedia for our potential readers.  
However, I would urge my fellow editors to think about it.  I am sure that once you exam the subject matter and give it some due consideration and thought, your exercise of reason will 
support the inclusion of this material, and not its exclusion.  7&6=thirteen (talk) 21:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Just a list'' concerning Further reading

message: As soon as the last semi protection lifted, we had a recurrence of the prior problem.  Perhaps we should go to WP:AIV.  7&6=thirteen (talk) 14:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: This article needs to be semi-protected again

message: I have found various factoid numbers for Elijah McCoy patents, ranging from 57 to 100.  I also think that a list of patents and a source would be a good addition.  There has got to be an authoritative source.  7&6=thirteen (talk) 13:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Partial list of Elijah McCoy patents. I have seen evidence of other patents elsewhere.   Illustrated tour of Elijah McCoy inventions 7&6=thirteen (talk) 16:08, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: How many patents?

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Elijah McCoy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110517111621/http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/mccoy/ to http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/mccoy/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110427150035/http://billcasselman.com/whats_in_a_canadian_name/wiacn_real_mccoy.htm to http://www.billcasselman.com/whats_in_a_canadian_name/wiacn_real_mccoy.htm
*Added archive https://archive.is/20120710204002/http://info.detnews.com/redesign/history/story/historytemplate.cfm?id=70 to http://info.detnews.com/redesign/history/story/historytemplate.cfm?id=70
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:16, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Elijah McCoy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130519210419/http://www.r-go.ca/elijah_mccoy_picture.htm to http://www.r-go.ca/elijah_mccoy_picture.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081228104640/http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/167.html to http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/167.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130519210419/http://www.r-go.ca/elijah_mccoy_picture.htm to http://www.r-go.ca/elijah_mccoy_picture.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081228104640/http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/167.html to http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/167.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:23, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article says that the term Real McCoy didn’t originate with him, citing the previously used term “Real McKay.” If he is the first whose products were dubbed “real McCoy,” then this should reflect that the older phrase morphed and became McCoy thanks to his name and reputation. 108.232.152.148 (talk) 21:45, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real McCoy 

message: Google doodle recently featured Elijah on their homepage in order to promote their own business interests. Many people have demanded the person/team behind Google doodle be fired due to abuse of power, blatant misinformation, conflict of interests, promotion of Eleiyas and people with 'li' in their name. Google wants to brainwash people into thinking only people with 'li' in their name can be inventors, and everybody else cannot, which is complete garbage. Neri Lynn (talk) 07:02, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it would qualify for immediate deletion under WP:TALK Delete. "It is common to simply delete gibberish, test edits, harmful or prohibited material..." Nbauman (talk) 16:14, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google doodle pushing pov 

message: The text says: Historians have not agreed on the importance of McCoy's contribution to the field of lubrication. Early-20th century lubrication literature barely mentions him. For example, his name is absent from E. L. Ahrons' Lubrication of Locomotives (1922), which does identify several other early pioneers and companies of the field.
It should hardly be surprising that - at least as of 1922, no more recent scholarship is referenced - the value of the contributions of Africans anywhere in the Diaspora is disputed. The same would obviously be true for his exclusion from a book from that time period. Unless one is willing to assert that the author, Ahrons, was both all knowing and without bias, exclusion from this book does not prove anything. If McCoy's contributions were of such questionable value, how was he able to keep patenting and selling them? I would like to see this section re-worded or eliminated, based on more current scholarship, if any is available.Natcolley (talk) 10:25, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:Verifiability not WP:Truth.  7&6=thirteen (☎) 10:27, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

text: This looks like, RE Ahron's work, anyway, it's a confusion of perspective.  Note from this article "By 1899, the Michigan Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics reported that the McCoy lubricator was in use on almost all North American railroads", emphasis added, whereas a quick look at Ahron's page shows he was British & his books and work dealt primarily with BRITISH railways. So all other issues of race & erasure aside there's no reason his books on trains in England would talk about something used primarily in North America. JamesG5 (talk) 21:45, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  History, Historians, and Black people and their contributions of any kind whatsoever