INSANELY FUN
On hot summer days, there are two things kids are thankful for—Popsicles and Super Soakers. One was invented by an 11-year-old boy, and the other was created by a rocket scientist. Both of these insanely fun inventions were discovered by accident.
One cold evening in 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson was playing with a glass of flavored soda water and a stick. When he was called inside, Frank forgot about his drink and left it outside overnight. The next morning, he found he had created a frozen treat on a stick.
As an adult, Frank decided to sell his frozen dessert to beachgoers and vacationers. By 1924, he had a good business selling fruit-flavored ice on birch wood sticks. He applied for a patent and the Popsicle was born.
The Super Soaker was the accidental discovery of Lonnie G. Johnson, a successful NASA engineer and inventor. Johnson started inventing when he was a little boy growing up in Mobile, AL. He built a go-kart out of junkyard scraps and a lawnmower engine. He had a great time racing it along the highway until the police pulled him over. In 1968, Johnson entered his compressed power robot in the Junior Engineering Technical Society. Johnson won first prize and went on to study at Tuskegee University on an academic scholarship. He graduated with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in nuclear engineering.
Johnson went on to join the U.S. Air Force and help develop the stealth bomber. Then he went to work at NASA and helped engineer the Galileo mission to Jupiter and tire Cassini mission to Saturn.
In his spare time, Johnson still liked to work on his own inventions. He was working on a model of an environmentally friendly heat pump one evening in 1982 and decided to test it in his bathroom. When he aimed the nozzle and pulled the lever, he sent a powerful blast of water into the tub. Johnson loved it. This was fun!
He now had two inventions to work on. He kept tinkering with his heat pump, but he also decided to perfect his. “Power Drencher” and make it into an awesome squirt gun. It took 7 years of experimenting and selling the concept, but in 1989, the Super Soaker was born. It is still one of the top-selling toys in the world.
Johnson has used the profits from his Super Soaker to fund his research of the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter (JTEC). If it works, the JTEC will be an advanced heat engine that can convert solar energy into electricity with twice the efficiency of existing models. It might not sound as fun as a Super Soaker or a Popsicle, but it would be an insanely important invention that could push the green technology revolution into the future.
