Words matter. These are the best Lonnie Johnson Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I consider myself a general practitioner. I do electronic things. I do toys and water things, mechanical stuff. I’m very, very flexible.
After I graduated from Tuskegee with a masters in nuclear engineering, the draft was on so I signed up for ROTC. I figured if I had to go into the military, I’d rather go in as an officer.
I don’t think there’s any project that I started that I ever stopped working on.
Peer review is fine, as long as you’re making incremental improvements to a technology.
That’s one of the advantages of being an inventor and tinkerer – I have everything I need to make what I need.
Being an independent inventor is tough. You develop a product, patent it, then you’re looking for someone who will see the benefit from this technology. You assume all the investment and all the risk. It can be a challenge.
In 1975, I was called to active duty in the Air Force, studying U.S. space launches that used nuclear power. I felt it was a big deal to be involved in such an important project – we were providing technical support for launch recommendations that ultimately went to the president.
I can remember times when we’d be having parties, and people would be dancing and everything and I would be sitting there in the middle doing calculus, just doing my little thing.
I’ve always liked to tinker with things.
In 1968 when I was in high school I built a four-foot-tall remote control robot with pneumatic cylinders that operated his hands. My robot won first place at a science competition at the University of Alabama where my high school was the only African-American school represented. That was a huge moral victory.
I thought to myself, jeez, it would be really nice to have a high power water gun. It felt really, really good holding a powerful stream in my hand.
Persevere. That’s what I always say to people. There’s no easy route.
Nobody’s going to step in and dump a lot of money and make it easy. Unless you have a lot of money, you have to pay your dues and make a personal sacrifice.
I was working on a heat pump that used water as a working fluid, and I made some jet pumps for it. I accidentally shot a stream of water across a bathroom where I was doing the experiment and thought to myself, ‘this would make a great gun.’
I love playing around with ideas and turning them into something useful or fun.
As an inventor, it’s a rite of passage to have an engine. I’d like to have my own engine someday.
There was a time in my life when I was independently wealthy.
When I was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory back in the early ’80s is when I first got the idea. The Super Soaker was based on some engineering principles that I applied. I was actually working on another invention which was a heat pump that would use water as a working fluid instead of Freon.
When I think back on my childhood and the things that happened to me, there were certain periods of time where I felt like I was being saved for something. I feel like I have a gift, and it would be a sin to waste it.
I have a collection of SuperSoakers. I have managed to keep most of them.
It was because of the success of the Super Soaker, I was able to at least get an audience with people to present some of my other ideas.
You sometimes have a very innovative company, and if they come up with one idea, they can come up with many more – if they’re successful. If they can’t feed themselves, you lose that creativity.
I have never really understood why in this country so many people look down on black people.
I’ve invented a new type of engine that converts heat directly into electricity with no moving mechanical parts. It’s called the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter, the JTEC.
The invention that most people know me for is the Super Soaker water gun. I knew the gun worked well, and I knew it would be successful. I did not realize how successful it would be.
