![]() “When I grew up in Alabama back then, everything was still very segregated,” Johnson recalls. Governor George Wallace, who earlier that year had declared, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium, causing a showdown with federal authorities. The year was 1968, only five years after a federal district court ordered the University of Alabama to admit Black students Vivian Malone and James Hood. His team represented the only Black school at the fair. Johnson attended the all-Black Williamson High School in Mobile, Alabama, and presented his robot – named “Linex” – at a local Junior Engineering science fair held at the University of Alabama. One of his proudest inventions to date is a robot he built in high school. He grew up in Alabama in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement “Ever since I was a small kid, I used to tinker and make little toys and things … I built a go-cart, windmills, just a lot, rockets.” “I’ve been an inventor, I think, for all my life,” Johnson says. Johnson considers himself a lifelong tinkerer. “For the N-Strike Nerf product line, those guns were all based on my patents … Super Soaker, of course, that entire line started as a result of my invention.” “Some of my most famous patents are for the Nerf guns and Super Soakers,” Johnson says. Oh, did we mention that he also invented the Nerf gun? “I was using compressed air to shoot chinaberries.” “That was actually the first Nerf gun, before Nerf came out,” Johnson says. This would foreshadow a later (very popular) invention. One of his earliest toy creations was building chinaberry guns with his friends using a mop and hollowed out bamboo tubing. He had been making toys since he was a kid “When I was a kid, I always wanted to make a better toy, something I enjoyed playing with,” he remembers. This wasn’t the engineer’s first foray into toy-making. Maybe I could get enough money to support my habit,” Johnson recalls. “I was experimenting with some nozzles that I machined, and I shot a stream of water across the bathroom and I thought, ‘Geez, maybe I should put this hard science stuff aside and work on something fun like a water gun. “I was working on a new idea for a heat pump that would use water as a working fluid instead of Freon.” At the time, there was concern about how the continuous use of Freon would impact the environment, so Johnson set out to see if he could develop a refrigeration system that used water, instead. “When I came up for the idea for the water gun, I was working on something else,” Johnson recalls. The scientist and engineer is responsible for over 100 patents, including a thermoelectric energy convertor and a thin film lithium battery.īut his most famous invention? One of the best toys of the 20th century, the Super Soaker.Īnd it came to existence all thanks to an accidental discovery. Lonnie Johnson might be one of the most brilliant inventors of our time. ![]()
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