Kevin David Creative

The year is 1990. A new kid on the block named Bart Simpson encouraged a nation to eat his shorts. Airlines banned smoking on all flights (unless the flight was longer than six hours—they’re not monsters you know). And a NASA aerospace engineer would change our summers forever with the invention of a water pistol poweful enough to dominate any neighborhood bathing suit battle.

Lonnie Johnson was a star right from the start. Born in Mobile, Alabama, he was fascinated by science as a young boy after his father demonstrated how electrical currents worked. Nicknamed “The Professor” by his friends, Johnson was always tinkering with the mechanics of toys, including dissecting his sister’s doll to see how its eyes closed and constructing a go-kart out of scrap metal and engine parts.

Representing Williamson High School, Johnson attended a state-wide science fair as the only black student in attendance. His working robot named “Linex,” which operated on compressed air, was awarded first prize. After receiving several scholarship offers, Johnson chose to attend Tuskegee University, a historically black school famous for the Tuskegee Airmen.

Johnson graduated with a mechanical engineering degree in 1973 and a master’s degree in nuclear engineering in 1975. After working for the US Airforce on stealth technology, Johnson soon took a position with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1979, developing the nuclear power source for the Galileo mission to Jupiter. Naturally, after child’s play like nuclear space travel, the only space for Johnson to voyage to next was the toy department.

Johnson believed that he could construct a pressurized water gun after shooting a powerful stream of water in his bathroom while performing experiments for a new type of refrigeration system. He constructed his first succesful prototype out of PVC pipe, plexiglass and a two-liter soda bottle.

He knew he had a hit in his hands, but several years would pass before Johnson was given an audience with one of the world’s leading toy manufacturers. Rather than bore those of us who aren’t accomplished scientists with its surprisingly technical design, Johnson correctly concluded a demonstration would literally get the message across.

“I remember sitting in their conference room with the president and vice-president of the company and some marketing people. I opened my suitcase, took the gun out and shot it across the conference room. And they said: “Wow!”

With this simple but brilliant sales pitch, Johnson showed the suits what his invention could bring to the picnic table. Originally called the Power Drencher, a rebranding effort and big marketing push propelled the Super Soaker to the top of the list as one of the greatest toys of all time, selling over 2 million units in its first year and instantly rendering lesser pool party weapons obsolete. The licensing provided enough cash for him to create Johnson Research & Development Co., complete with 30 full-time staff members.

While Johnson holds plenty of patents and continues to work on new inventions, he still brings his most famous creation to classrooms across the country to inspire the next generation of scientists to enter an industry that once shut the door on black kids dreaming to change the world.

“In spite of the things that have been perpetrated on my race – holding us in bondage under slavery, then making it illegal to educate us and then subjecting us to long-term discrimination and criticism – we succeed anyway, to a very large extent. We just need to realise what we’re capable of.”