Born on October 6, 1949 in Mobile, Arizona, during the heyday of Jim Crow laws, no one would have expected Lonnie G. Johnson to truly make a mark on the world. Johnson, the inventor of the infamous Super Soaker water gun had to fight racism and segregation in his early years to get to where he is today – much like his idol and inspiration, George Washington Carver.
Lonnie George Johnson’s father, a world war 2 veteran and a driver at nearby Air Force bases was perhaps Johnson’s earliest source of inspiration. He was a rather accomplished handyman as well and taught all his children to build homemade toys. When he was still quite young, Lonnie Johnson with the help of his father, was building toys like pressurized chinaberry shooters using bamboo shoots. At age 13, he built a homemade go-kart using scraps from the junkyard – which he used to race on the roads.
It was during this time that Lonnie Johnson truly started envisioning himself as an inventor. Jim Crow laws, however, stood in the way. He attended the all-black Williamson High School, where he was never promised anything more than a career as a technician, despite his obvious brilliance. That never stopped young Johnson, though. In 1968 – a few years after Jim Crow laws were abolished -, Lonnie Johnson would be the only black person to be a part of the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) sponsored science fair at the University of Alabama. There, he unveiled a robot he had been working on for over a year called ‘The Linex’ (also made from scrap metal like his go-kart). Naturally, no amount of racism could have stopped his brilliant invention winning the first prize, which it did.
After finishing high school, Johnson enrolled in the Tuskegee University on a scholarship, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and master’s in Nuclear Engineering. Following university, he was hired by the U.S Air Force and eventually NASA’s jet propulsion lab.
Johnson worked at NASA for almost 12 years on a number of projects like the Air Force missions lab, the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the stealth bomber and several weapons related project. Despite such a hectic schedule, Johnson always found time to relive his childhood passion of inventing. One of these inventions was a heat pump that used water instead of the environmentally damaging Freon. This heat pump itself never came to fruition but its nozzle and use of water gave birth to a product that has brought sheer joy to millions of children – the water gun. Johnson knew he had struck gold after inventing the water gun – or “Power Drencher” as he called it – and even quit his job to sell the product. For 8 years, he saw nothing but painstaking pitch meetings and rejection until the invention was finally bought by the Larami Corporation. Initially, sales were anything but high and the product was failing in the market but after the Power Drencher had its name changed to Super Soaker, it became a massive hit, making over $200 million in sales in 1991 alone.
The success of the Super Soaker gave Johnson enough confidence and finances to start his own company, Johnson Research and Development Co. Inc. The company went on to acquire patents for inventions such as ceramic batteries and hair rollers that don’t require heat, diapers that played tunes when being ‘used’ and perhaps most impressive of all, a heat engine, JTEC, that can convert solar energy into electricity, which is still under development and could change the course of science if developed.
His achievements have earned him the Air Force Achievement Medal, the Air Force Commendation Medal as well as quite a few awards from NASA, owing to the work he did for spacecraft system designs. He was also honored with a Breakthrough Award from science magazine, popular mechanics for his work for JTEC.
Johnson is also board chairman of Georgia Alliance for Children along with being a member of the 100 Black Men of Atlanta. He was also inducted into the State Alabama Engineering hall of fame in 2011.
Lonnie Johnson currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and four children.