Johnson, Lonnie (1949-…), an African American engineer, became famous as the inventor of a high-powered toy water gun called the Super Soaker. The Super Soaker was a top-selling toy of the early 1990’s. Johnson has conducted research for the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He is also the founder of his own engineering company.
In 1982, Johnson was experimenting with a cooling device called a heat pump. The leaky pump shot a stream of water, giving him the idea for his water gun. Johnson built a prototype (test model) using a soft drink bottle, plexiglass, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe. Toy water guns of the time fired using the pressure generated by pulling the trigger, producing only a small squirt of water. Johnson’s version enabled the user to manually pump air into the gun’s water chamber, pressurizing it before firing. The result was a spray of water that could drench a target from many feet or meters away. He received a patent for the invention in 1986. He licensed the invention in 1989 to the toy company Larami, which produced the Super Soaker.
Lonnie George Johnson was born Oct. 6, 1949, in Mobile, Alabama. From an early age, he showed an interest in science and technology. He attended Alabama’s Tuskegee University, earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1973 and a master’s degree in nuclear engineering in 1976. He then served in the Air Force, conducting nuclear and weapons research. In 1979, he went to work for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he helped develop the power system for the Galileo mission to Jupiter. In 1982, he returned to the Air Force. Johnson went back to JPL in 1987. With the profits from the Super Soaker, he left JPL to form his own engineering company. The company conducts research into alternative energy.
