Wednesday, February 27, 2002
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Wednesday, February 27, 2002 |
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Famous toy inventor talks to students about importance of perseverance
The inventor of one of the most famous toys in the world delivered a life lesson to students at North Fayette Elementary School. Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker® the worlds first high-performance, pressurized water gun, told a room full of third, fourth and fifth grade students that he knew early in his life that he wanted to be an engineer. As a child, Johnson was curious about how mechanical things worked and spent hours taking toys apart to find out what made them perform in a certain way. By the time he entered high school, he decided to take a test to see if he was suited for a career in engineering. The results claimed he did not have the aptitude for the field and it was suggested that being a technician would better suit him. "I decided not to listen to that. I decided to persevere," Johnson tells students. "Perseverance is my special word because it has gotten me where I am today." Soon after taking the test, Anderson's very first invention, a remote controlled robot he named Linex, won first place in the University of Alabama's Junior Engineering Technical Society Exposition in 1968. Anderson told students how he continued to persevere when he graduated from Tuskegee University with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering and later with a master's of science in nuclear engineering and a Ph.D. in science. Throughout his career as an engineer with the U.S. Airforce, NASA and private research laboratories, Johnson's perseverance gave him the determination to come home after a long day at work and conduct experiments for his own projects in the basement of his home at night. In fact, conducting an at-home experiment sparked the beginning of what would become his most profitable invention to date. While working for Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Johnson was experimenting with a new type of heat pump that would use water as a working fluid instead of Freon. "I had a nozzle hooked to my sink in the bathroom and I was shooting this thing into the tub and the stream of water was so powerful that the curtains were swirling in the breeze it sent out. I thought to myself that this would make a great water gun." Although he knew he had hit on a hot idea, it would take him almost seven years before the Super Soaker® would reach the marketplace. Johnson told students how he had to persevere once again to secure his own patent for the toy and to sell the idea to a manufacturer who would be willing to make and distribute it to stores. "Perseverance has always been my favorite word when it comes to the world of invention because the process is a long, complicated, and at times very a frustrating one," Anderson said. Nine years after its inauspicious beginning in Johnson's bathtub, the Super Soaker® rose to become the hottest selling toy in America, breaking previous sales records set by Nintendo. It is estimated that more than 200 million Super Soakers® have been sold with revenues ranging around $400 million. Johnson is not the only one who knows about perseverance. North Fayette Elementary School Principal Louis Robinson had been trying to secure the famous inventor for about five years. "This is something I have been looking forward to for a long time. For several years I have been calling Mr. Anderson's office to try to get him to come to the school but his busy schedule would not allow it," Robinson said. "However, I continued to call and I guess my perseverance finally paid off," he said.
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