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… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
More and more, other countries are able to manufacture things cheaper, beating us in the marketplace in a lot of ways. So we need… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
Lady Luck is indifferent. She smiles sometimes, and she frowns sometimes. — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
The invention that most people know me for is the Super Soaker water gun. I knew the gun worked well, and I knew it… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
It was because of the success of the Super Soaker, I was able to at least get an audience with people to present some… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
Large companies can afford to file patents on every idea they have. Small companies, we have to weigh our options, do the research. We… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
I have a collection of SuperSoakers. I have managed to keep most of them. — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
I can remember times when we'd be having parties, and people would be dancing and everything and I would be sitting there in the… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
Being an independent inventor is tough. You develop a product, patent it, then you're looking for someone who will see the benefit from this… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
I didn't want to grow old and find that I didn't do what I could have done, that I didn't put my best foot… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
I consider myself a general practitioner. I do electronic things. I do toys and water things, mechanical stuff. I'm very, very flexible. — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
Peer review is fine, as long as you're making incremental improvements to a technology. — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
I decided I could develop a toy and get some revenue from that and then use that revenue to really become an inventor and… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
I wound up getting offered a job at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I invented a power supply mechanism for the Galileo space… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
I've invented a new type of engine that converts heat directly into electricity with no moving mechanical parts. It's called the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter,… — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
Especially when you have a lot of technology you're developing as a small company, trying to protect that technology is a real problem. — Lonnie Johnson Copy Share Image
