Meet Lonnie Johnson, who invented the Super Soaker water gun from the basement of his house and raised more than $1 billion.
Lonnie Johnson is an inventor and aerospace engineer who worked for the POTwhere he helped test the first radar-undetectable aircraft. However, He is best known for being the creator of pistols nerf and the Super Soaker water gunwhich was very popular in the 90’s and with more than 170 models made, it raised more than U$D1,000 million.
Since he was little, Johnson had a fascination with playing with things. His father taught him his first electricity lesson, in which he explained that two wires are needed for electric current to circulate, one for the electrons to enter and the other for them to leave. Some time later, in his last year of high school, he built a robot called Linex meter tall for the science fair, won and He got a scholarship with the Air Force and another in mathematics at Tuskegee University.
Some time later the engineer presented an analysis that identified a possible failure that NASA had not detected, they invited me to participate in the Galileo Missionthe unmanned spacecraft sent to study Jupiter and its moons. But he never stopped inventing his own creations.
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He became a millionaire thanks to a water gun
One afternoon, Lonnie Johnson built a hose nozzle and connected it to the bathroom sink. From there came a jet of water so powerful that gave him the idea of the water gun that would make him a millionaire. But it would be months before he could put his idea into action.
When he rejoined the Air Force and became the Strategic Air Command’s first engineer, he set out to manufacture the gun. When he finished the prototype, he gave it to his daughter, Aneka, and found that The other children couldn’t even get close because of how powerful the jet was..
The final prototype had a length of 628 millimeters, the diameter of the jet was 2.4 millimeters and could reach 12 meters. In 1990, the water gun hit supermarkets and that summer alone, along with the toy company Larami, They sold more than 20 million Super Soaker guns.
The controversies of the Super Soaker, the most powerful water gun in the world
It wasn’t all good news for Lonnie Johnson. His great invention brought with it some tragic incidentslike for example, one time some kids shot a person with the Super Soaker and he responded with a real gun. Another case involved some Boston teenagers fighting with water until it turned into a real fight that ended with the death of one. Because of all this, the state of Boston tried to ban these toys.
Johnson dedicated himself to designing and selling the pistols nerfsome with compressed air and others with water. He also built scientific facilities. However, Lonnie Johnson has many ideas in mind that when he is done with his hard science projects he will be able to dedicate himself to them completely.
Source: Ambito
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