If something is "The Real McCoy" it is the original not copied item. Who is McCoy and where did the phrase originate?

jbean

One story goes that a man named McCoy invented a system for oiling railroad wheels that worked pretty well. Others copied his design, but ad-men sold the virtues of the original design saying it 'was the Real McCoy' [Feb 10 04 10:04 PM] jbean writes: Just checked ask.com....it was steam engine lubrication, not necessarily railroad equipment Feb 10 04, 9:58 PM

woody156

I heard it was a used car salesman in Ohio, I think, in the 50's.....a foggy memory at best on this one [Feb 10 04 10:45 PM] woody156 writes: I just Googled this from Quinon.com: "There are at least half a dozen theories about which of the myriad McCoys of America at the end of the nineteenth century is the genuinely real McCoy. Was it, as Alistair Cooke argued, a famous cattle baron? Or was it perhaps Elijah McCoy, who invented a machine to lubricate the moving parts of a railway locomotive? The broad consensus seems to be that it was Kid McCoy, the former welterweight boxing champion of the 1890s. He had so many imitators, taking his name in boxing booths in small towns throughout the country, that it seems he had eventually to bill himself as Kid “The Real” McCoy, and the phrase stuck. Now let me enter a caveat: The Oxford English Dictionary records this from a letter written by the author Robert Louis Stevenson in 1883: “He’s the real Mackay”. It’s not only in a different spelling, but a decade before Kid McCoy became famous, and almost certainly refers to the famous Scottish firm of whisky makers. So the debate must continue." Feb 10 04, 10:43 PM