From Stealth Bomber to Super Soaker – the remarkable story of Lonnie Johnson
Dear all,
This week our Physics Department has been celebrating Science and Engineering Week in the UK, and in Monday’s assembly, we heard the story of a man who has worked on some of the most significant engineering projects in the US but who is best known for inventing something most of us have probably enjoyed using at some point in our lives.
Lonnie Johnson was born in Mobile, Alabama in October 1949. His mother was a care worker and his father was a World War II veteran. From an early age, he showed an interest in how things were made and was nicknamed ‘the Professor’ by his friends. As a child, he once took apart his sister’s baby doll to learn how its eyes opened and closed, whilst he built a fully functional go-kart at the age of 10 that was confiscated by police when they found him driving down the road in it.
Undeterred, he continued his interest in learning how things worked at school. This was the era of racial segregation in America and Johnson attended an all-black school. In 1968, he represented his high school at a science fair in Alabama, where he was the only black student. He won first prize with a robot he had built from scrap metal and was powered by compressed air.
He graduated from university with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a masters’ in Nuclear Engineering, before joining the US Air Force, where he worked on the top secret project to build the Stealth Bomber. He was then recruited by NASA and played a pivotal role in building the Galileo space probe that flew to Jupiter, the Cassini mission to Saturn, and the Mars Observer project.
Despite his stellar career on top-secret projects such as these, Johnson also found time to pursue his interest in inventions.
In 1982, he was attempting to build a new type of pump that would circulate water in refrigerators that would be powered by water pressure. He connected his prototype pump to the bathroom sink and was surprised at the powerful jet of water that was shot out by the device, which gave him the idea for his most famous invention – the Super Soaker.
Unlike every other water gun on the market at that time, the Super Soaker was unique because it used a hand pump to generate air pressure that could send a concentrated stream of water up to 20 to 30 feet.
He partnered with the toy company Larami to attract investment in his idea, but the initial project – called the Drencher – ran into difficulties because another product had a similar name. Two years later – in 1991 – the name was changed to Super Soaker and backed by a TV ad campaign, which led to huge success. It was the best-selling toy for the next three years. In 1991 alone it generated $200 million, and over the next decade, over 200 million Super Soakers were sold.
Johnson has applied for over 100 patents for his inventions over the course of his career, and he is also the man responsible for inventing the Nerf dart. He has an estimated net worth of over $300 million, much of it from an invention that came from an attempt to make a water pump for a fridge.
The story of Lonnie Johnson is a remarkable one – a man who came from humble beginnings, who pursued his interest in learning about how things work and the passion it developed into making them work even better, and who maintained an intrinsic curiosity that enabled him to see the alternative applications of his work. As we celebrate Science and Engineering Week, that’s definitely something for our students to think about as they consider where their interests and passions might take them in life.
Have a great weekend
Best wishes
Michael Bond
