Lonnie George Johnson, most famous for inventing the Super Soaker water gun, was born on October 6, 1949, in Mobile, Alabama. His father worked as a truck driver and his homemaker mother occasionally worked service jobs. His parents also picked cotton in the summer, on a farm belonging to Johnson’s grandfather. Inspired by innovator George Washington Carver, Johnson took an early interest to inventing and science. While in high school, he constructed a robot out of scrap which he named “Linex.” Linex won a state science fair in 1968, during Johnson’s senior year of high school. Based on academic merit and his science fair win, Johnson was awarded a math scholarship to Tuskegee University. Johnson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Tuskegee in 1973. Two years later, he completed a Master of Science degree in nuclear engineering. Johnson spent the next few years working for Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the United States Air Force. In 1979, Johnson joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where he worked on the Galileo spacecraft, which was launched on a flight to Jupiter. In 1982, he returned to the US Air Force, where he worked until 1987. It … Continue reading Lonnie Johnson (1949- )