Elijah J. McCoy was a Canadian-American inventor and engineer, who was notable for his 57 U.S.

United States

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 patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

s, most to do with lubrication of steam engines. His family returned to the United States in 1847, where he lived for the rest of his life and became a US citizen.
Elijah J. McCoy was born free in 1844 in Colchester, Ontario, Canada to George and Mildred (Goins) McCoy, who were African American.