The real McCoy is the genuine article, and there are three origins that all contributed to the spread of the catchphrase. Closest to home and perhaps the earliest to be attested is Canadian and American railroaders’ jargon where the real McCoy was the nickname for a railway car self-lubricating coupling and cup invented by an African Canadian named Elijah McCoy who was born in Colchester South, Ontario. McCoy’s self-lubricating cup permitted metal joints to be oiled automatically as the machines that contained them worked. Railway cars ran longer and more smoothly with Elijah McCoy’s invention.
One model of the McCoy lubricating cup Here is one summary of McCoy's far from happy life, originaly written as promotional material for a play about Elijah McCoy: “Born in Canada to runaway slaves, Canadian playwright Ashante Infantry recently wrote an entire play about this early African-Canadian whiz.“The Real McCoy” opened in Toronto in 2006 to highly favorable reviews. The play runs until February 26th, 2006, and tickets are available by calling the box office at Factory Theatre Mainspace, 125 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario,Canada.
This historical plaque conveniently covers up the nastier parts of Elijah McCoy's life in Detroit, like so much white recounting of black history. For a more balanced treatment of the inventor's story, read the school book pictured below published by Scholastic Press.
The book above is an excellent school text. There is also a good website with Elijah McCoy's story: http://www.africawithin.com/bios/elijah_mccoy.htm
OTHER POSSIBLE SOURCES OF THE PHRASE But the phrase was alive in Scotland too, as “the real Mackay,” a superior Scotch whisky made by the Mackay company. The phrase appears in print in Scotland by the 1870s and also in a slight variant as “the real McKie.” Even in America , Mackay’s whisky had brand clout, and was advertised widely as “the clear Mackay” which by prohibition times was whispered in American speakeasies as “the real Mackay”_an amber distillate far superior to the illegal, watery rotgut being peddled in most honky-tonk dives of the era. Both those usages predate the origin that gave wide currency to the expression in the United States . A boxer named Norman Selby (1873-1940) took the ring name of Kid McCoy in 1891. He won the world welterweight championship in 1897 and two years later in a spectacular boxing match that went twenty rounds McCoy knocked out heavyweight Joe Choynski. A headline the next morning in the San Francisco Examiner written by their sportswriter William Naughton blared: “NOW YOU’VE SEEN THE REAL McCOY!” The catchphrase raced across American newspapers and stuck in public speech as a synonym for ‘the goods, the authentic thing.’ McCoy himself did not last long on the canvas. In 1900 he saw stars the hard way when he was k.o.’d by Gentleman Jim Corbett. In The Real McCoy, a racy biography of the boxer, Robert Cantwell traced the man’s sad decline. He tried running a saloon in New York City . It failed. He tried showbiz, appearing as a boxer in an early and classic silent film, Broken Blossoms, directed in 1919 by D. W. Griffith. He tried marriage, ten times. In 1924 he tried nine years in San Quentin for manslaughter. The judge disagreed, but most people attached to the case figured McCoy murdered his mistress. It seems ten wives did not completely occupy his free time. He committed suicide in 1940 and left a note which he ended with this signature: “Norman Selby.” At the end, even the real McCoy was sick of his own moniker.
© 2006 William Gordon Casselman
Hundreds of links to more of my word entries are available below.
The Real McCoy: Canadian origin of the phrase Elijah McCoy and The Real McCoy Real McCoy and its Canadian source Black History of Canada Canadian Black history Afro-Canadian history of Canada Canadian inventors
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McCoy became a leading expert in the field of thermo-dynamics whose inventions revolutionized steam engine travel. When others tried to imitate his achievements, people began asking if what they were buying was ‘the real McCoy.’ When railroad engineers especially asked for a lubricating joint, they always wanted McCoy’s invention and asked for ‘the real McCoy.’ McCoy’s move to Detroit in the United States (see photo of memorial plaque below) exposed him to adversity and eventually stripped him of his inventions, his sanity and his life.” 
