Lonnie Johnson: Summertime Soaking

(Don’t miss the videos at the end of the post!)

Lonnie Johnson was born October 6, 1949, in Mobile, Alabama. Little did anyone know he’d go on to invent 1991’s number 1 selling toy — the Super Soaker.

Johnson was inspired at an early age by the story of George Washington Carver and began dreaming of becoming an inventor himself. But unlike the focus of our last Keepin Black History 100 entry, Phillip Bell Downing, Johnson’s family was not wealthy. Lonnie was one of six children. His father worked as a civilian driver for an Airforce Base and his mother worked in a laundry and as a nurse’s aide. During the summer, both parents picked cotton.

“Out of both interest and economic necessity, Johnson’s father was a skilled handyman who taught his six children to build their own toys. When Johnson was still a small boy, he and his dad built a pressurized chinaberry shooter out of bamboo shoots. At age 13, Johnson attached a lawnmower engine to a go-kart he built from junkyard scraps and raced it along the highway until the police pulled him over.”¹

In 1968 Lonnie represented his high school at a science fair sponsored by the Junior Engineering Technical Society and helf at the University of Alabama. He won first prize with “Linex,” a compressed-air-powered robot made of junkyard scraps. He was the only Black student in the competition.

Segregation was still legal during Lonnie’s childhood and the schools he attended were segregated including his high school (Williamson) which did not desegrated until after he graduated. So, it is not surprising that the University’s officials at the competition were not thrilled to see him take first prize.

“The only thing anybody from the university said to us during the entire competition,” Johnson later recalled, “was ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Y’all drive safe, now.’”

After high school Johnson attended Tuskegee University (at the time called Tuskegee Institute) where he received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (1973) and a master’s degree in nuclear engineering (1975). Between 1975 and 1989 Johnson would move back and forth between the U.S. Air Force and NASA working on several important projects including the Strategic Air Command, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, the Galileo mission to mars, and the Saturn Cassini project.

Lonnie Johnson did not set out to invent the Super Soaker. He was trying to create an environmentally friendly heat pump that would work on water instead of Freon. But when he tested fired his first completed prototype, Johnson realized its potential as a toy.

He was granted a patent from the U. S. Patent Office for his “Squirt Gun” on May 27, 1986. In 1989 he formed his own engineering company and licensed the Super Soaker to Larami Corp. In 1991 it was the #1 bestselling toy in America, generating more than $200 million in sales.² It was inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame in 2015.

The Super Soaker was his first invention, but not his last. He holds more than 250 patents, many related to the Super Soaker. Johnson was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2022. He works to introduce students from diverse and underserved backgrounds to STEM through the Johnson STEM Activity Center.

Below we’ve shared two YouTube videos where you can hear Lonnie Johnson talk about his life and inventions in his own voice.