Summertime is the season for water-soaked fun and there's no better way to have a blast than to arm yourself with the daddy of all water guns, the Super Soaker®! With its ability to shoot water farther, faster, and drench your enemies more accurately than earlier squirt guns, it became the ultimate summer fun for kids when it was introduced in 1989. Even big kid Michael Jackson named the Super Soaker as one of his favorites toys.
So who invented this summer classic? Lonnie G. Johnson, the same guy who helped develop the stealth bomber program and send missions into space as a NASA engineer. Here are five facts about the inventor who was told he could he never be an inventor:
1. He wanted to be George Washington Carver.
Johnson always wanted to be an inventor even though the odds were against him. As an African-American growing up in segregated Mobile, Alabama, he was told the best he could do was become a technician, but Johnson aspired to follow in the footsteps of George Washington Carver, the pioneering African-American scientist and inventor who devised over 100 products using the peanut. …show more content…
He started inventing toys as a child.
His father taught him how to make his own toys as a child including a pressurized Chinaberry shooter he made out of bamboo shoots and a go-cart made from junkyard scraps and a lawnmower engine. Some of his other experiments landed him in hot water with his mom, including tearing up his sister’s baby doll to see how it’s eyes opened and closed, and nearly burning down his house when he tried to cook rocket fuel in one of her saucepans.
Super Soakers, attack! (Photo:
So who invented this summer classic? Lonnie G. Johnson, the same guy who helped develop the stealth bomber program and send missions into space as a NASA engineer. Here are five facts about the inventor who was told he could he never be an inventor:
1. He wanted to be George Washington Carver.
Johnson always wanted to be an inventor even though the odds were against him. As an African-American growing up in segregated Mobile, Alabama, he was told the best he could do was become a technician, but Johnson aspired to follow in the footsteps of George Washington Carver, the pioneering African-American scientist and inventor who devised over 100 products using the peanut. …show more content…
He started inventing toys as a child.
His father taught him how to make his own toys as a child including a pressurized Chinaberry shooter he made out of bamboo shoots and a go-cart made from junkyard scraps and a lawnmower engine. Some of his other experiments landed him in hot water with his mom, including tearing up his sister’s baby doll to see how it’s eyes opened and closed, and nearly burning down his house when he tried to cook rocket fuel in one of her saucepans.
Super Soakers, attack! (Photo: