Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

Persevere. That's what I always say to people. There's no easy route.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

Most of my career as an engineer, I was put in environments where I was the only person of color in the room.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I love playing around with ideas and turning them into something useful or fun.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

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.'

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I would say that engineering has been a very positive experience overall, but usually coming into the situation it would be one of being underestimated. People would actually have low expectations. But I would take advantage of it quite honestly, because I would take my time to underestimate the situation.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

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.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

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.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

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.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, then graduated with a masters in nuclear engineering.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I consider myself a general practitioner. I do electronic things. I do toys and water things, mechanical stuff. I'm very, very flexible.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I've always liked to tinker with things.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I don't think there's any project that I started that I ever stopped working on.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

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.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

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.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I am a nuclear engineer. I'm working on advanced energy technology. I have a new type of the engine that converts heat into electricity, and I've also developed a new type of battery that's all ceramic, without liquid electrolyte.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I have never really understood why in this country so many people look down on black people.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

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.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I wound up getting offered a job at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I invented a power supply mechanism for the Galileo space craft which was in orbit around Jupiter until 2003.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

I got my first patent in 1979 before I left the Air Force. I called it the Digital Distance Measuring Instrument. It used ones and zeros and dots and dashes and a magnifying lens to read binary-encoded information from a scale that was photographically reduced. It used the same kind of technology that's used in CDs and DVDs.

Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson

There are maybe three inventions I have that I rank as my top inventions that I'm most proud of. The robot I built in high school, the memory-protected circuitry for the Galileo and the Super Soaker.