The Super Soaker

“The original Super-Soaker prototype and its inventor, Lonnie Johnson.” by Communicator is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

By: Grant Le, Journalist

Have you ever been having a nice walk in a searing summer day when you come face to face with a NASA rocket engineer with a gun and a menacing smile? Well I haven’t encountered any scenario of the such, but if you have, please call the authorities. Seriously though, the Super Soaker is an invention by NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson, and I’m here to tell you all about it.

The concept of the super soaker was thought of by Lonnie Johnson when he had shot a powerful beam of water in his bathroom while experimenting with a different refrigeration system. Lonnie Johnson is a NASA Engineer, winning the regional science fair in the University of Alabama, then going on to work as an engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, then finally NASA. As inspiration struck him like an arrow, he went to work on a prototype of what is now known as the Super Soaker.

It all started out with a PVC pipe, acrylic glass, and a water bottle. The idea was that you would use pressurized air to push the water out at high speeds, perfect for a child to use. Thinking that this was an amazing toy for children, he thought of producing the new and improved water gun himself, but realized that the costs were out of reach. He had decided to reach out to a toy manufacturing company, Larami, but was later manufactured by a toy production company that you may have heard of. Hasbro. In fact, not only was the Super Soaker invented by Lonnie Johnson, but the Nerf Gun too.

In conclusion, the Super Soaker was an accidental invention be Lonnie Johnson, a NASA engineer. It’s a nostalgic and beloved toy of children, and a terrifying and fiendish enemy of the neighbor’s kid. The Super Soaker is one of the most fun guns to beat the sun, and will forever live in our minds and in our hearts.

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