Historical Interpretation and Exhibits
Trailblazers of Innovation: African American Inventors Who Changed America
The National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center in partnership with Wright State University's Historical Interpretations and Exhibits class created a new exhibit highlighting African American inventors who have had a lasting impact in the areas of lighting, sanitation, fire safety, heating and cooling, and water management. As a class we uncovered the ways each broke social barriers to become trailblazers in creating a safer and healthier society.
Throughout the semester we learned how to build an exhibit from concept to opening, gaining skills in panel writing, artifact preparation and display, and exhibit installation. Working in groups, we were in charge a section of the exhibit, with each of us choosing a different innovator to research. I was a member of the Water Fun and Function team and selected engineer Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker water blaster.
Dr. Johnson's turned out to be a fascinating story to research. His early curiosity of how things work led him on a life-long journey to of innovation. Read more about Lonnie in the panel text I created for the exhibit.
Lonnie Johnson
1949–
The Super Soaker!
Have you ever experienced a happy accident? Inventor Lonnie Johnson has. While working on one invention a moment of chance sparked a completely new idea. This invention became the top-selling water toy of all time, the Super Soaker. Johnson's passion for engineering started at a young age. He liked to tinker with things. He would reverse-engineer his toys, taking them apart and putting them back together, just to see how they worked. His parents supported his curiosity, even when he almost burned down their house while making model rocket fuel in the kitchen. This led to a new rule in the Johnson household: "No more making rocket fuel in the house!" Johnson later attended the Tuskegee Institute and eventually earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering. He joined the U.S. Air Force and went to work at NASA, where he became an actual rocket scientist. In 1982, the idea for a pressurized water gun was accidentally born while tinkering at home with a new heat pump design. Johnson connected in nozzle to his bathroom faucet and accidentally shot a powerful stream of water across the room. This sparked an idea for a high-powered water blaster propelled by pressurized air chamber. He made a prototype and began to search for a potential manufacturer. Johnson's invention took eight years to develop before it was released by the Laramie Corporation in 1990. Since then, nearly 200 million Super Soakers in over 175 variations have been sold worldwide. Turns out, sometimes it really does take a rocket scientist! With over 200 patents to his name, Johnson's legacy extends far beyond his iconic water blaster.
For the exhibit, I sourced an original 1990's Super Soaker to for display. I also took on the challenge of building a non-working replica prototype of Johnson's original design to help illustrate the evolution of an invention from concept to product. My team added to the hands-on interactive portion of the exhibit with our "Connect the Pipes" activity inviting museum goers to connect the homes at the top to the water source at the bottom.