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Quick Facts
- NAME: Lonnie George Johnson
- OCCUPATION: Engineer, Inventor
- BIRTH DATE: October 06, 1949 (Age: 62)
- EDUCATION: Williamson High School, Tuskegee University
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Mobile, Alabama
- ZODIAC SIGN: Libra
Best Known For
Lonnie G. Johnson is an engineer and inventor who worked on the Cassini mission to Jupiter and invented the Super Soaker.
Lonnie G. Johnson. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 04:42, May 27, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946
Lonnie G. Johnson [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946, May 27
" Lonnie G. Johnson." 2012. Biography.com 27 May 2012, 04:42 http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946
' Lonnie G. Johnson', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946 [accessed May 27, 2012]
" Lonnie G. Johnson," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946 (accessed May 27, 2012).
Lonnie G. Johnson [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 May 27]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946.
Lonnie G. Johnson, http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946 (last visited May 27, 2012).
Lonnie G. Johnson, http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946 (last visited May 27, 2012).
Synopsis
Profile
Inventor, engineer. Lonnie Johnson was born October 6, 1949 in Mobile, Alabama. His father was a World War II veteran who worked as a civilian driver at nearby Air Force bases, while his mother worked in a laundry and as a nurse's aid. During the summers, both of Johnson's parents also picked cotton on his grandfather's farm. Out of both interest and economic necessity, Johnson's father was a skilled handyman who taught his 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 the age of 13, Johnson attached a lawnmower engine to a go-cart he built from junkyard scraps and raced it along the highway until the police pulled him over.
Johnson dreamed of becoming a famous inventor, and during his teenage years he grew more curious about the way things worked and more ambitious in his experimentation—sometimes to the detriment of his family. "Lonnie tore up his sister's baby doll to see what made the eyes close," his mother later recalled. Another time, he nearly burned the house down when he attempted to cook up rocket fuel in one of his mother's saucepans and the concoction exploded.
Johnson, who is African-American, grew up in the Deep South in the days of legal segregation and pervasive racism. He attended Williamson High School, an all-black school where, despite his precocious intelligence and creativity, he was told not to aspire beyond a career as a technician. Nevertheless, inspired by the story of the great black inventor George Washington Carver, Johnson persevered in his dream of becoming an inventor. Nicknamed "The Professor" by his high school buddies, as a senior Johnson represented his school at the 1968 Alabama State Science Fair. The fair took place at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where just five years earlier, in 1963, Governor George Wallace had literally tried to bar two black students from enrolling in the school by standing in the doorway of the auditorium. Johnson was the only black student in the competition. His entry was a compressed-air-powered robot called "the Linex" that he had painstakingly built from junkyard scraps over the course of a year. He won first prize—as well as a reward of $250 and a handsome plaque—much to the chagrin of the university officials. "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.'"
A year later, in 1969, Johnson graduated from Williamson High School as a member of its last segregated
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Famous Black Inventors
View groupBrowse notable black inventors such as Lonnie G. Johnson, George Washington Carver, Percy Julian.
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