44 Quotes by Lonnie Johnson

Lady Luck is indifferent. She smiles sometimes, and she frowns sometimes.

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

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.

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.

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.

I have a collection of SuperSoakers. I have managed to keep most of them.

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.'

I thought to myself, jeez, it would be really nice to have a high power water gun. It felt really, really good holding a powerful stream in my hand.

I decided I could develop a toy and get some revenue from that and then use that revenue to really become an inventor and work on some of the more challenging projects I had in mind.