Ep. 22: Lonnie Johnson: Serial Inventor: From Super Soakers to Solar Systems

Lonnie Johnson is a former Air Force and NASA engineer who invented the massively popular Super Soaker water gun. He currently oversees Johnson Research and Development, a company which commercializes technologies with a recent emphasis on alternative energy.  He studied at Tuskegee University where he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s in nuclear engineering.  He lives in the Atlanta area.

 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

  • Learn how he created one of the world’s top 20 all-time best selling toys.
  • He made his own toys from a young age including a go-kart he built from junkyard scraps.
  • He was told by his high school counselor that he shouldn’t aspire beyond a career as a technician but he didn’t let that advice deter him from his goal of becoming an inventor.
  • “The only thing that really leads to success is perseverance.”
  • His original goal with licensing the super soaker was simply to generate enough income to allow himself to become a full time inventor.
  • His latest invention, the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter, is a game changing technology that can dramatically improve the efficiency of alternative energy sources.
  • “Excellence is setting goals that are tough so you can wake up every day knowing that you’re doing something worthwhile.”

Ep. 19: Alan Eustace: Record-Setting 26 Mile Free Fall Jump

Alan Eustace holds the record for highest altitude free fall jump. On October 24, 2016, he jumped from the stratosphere at an altitude of 136,000 feet or about 26 miles.  Alan was a Vice President of Engineering and Knowledge for Google and held many other executive roles at other high tech companies prior to Google.  He is currently retired and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

  • He had so much confidence in his team and his equipment and so much practice along the way that he had absolutely no fear on the final record-setting jump.
  • He used scuba diving as inspiration for solving the challenge of surviving in a self-contained system in the stratosphere.
  • Unlike Felix Baumgartner’s Red Bull-sponsored jump which had tons of media and buzz around it, Alan approached the jump more as a science experiment with little fanfare.
  • Learn how he assembled and oversaw a team of leading experts across multiple fields which were foreign to him at the time including meteorology, ballooning, spacesuit design, environmental systems and high altitude medicine.
  • There were multiple feats of engineering to enable a safe flight including a specially-designed rogue parachute that could stabilize him during his fall, a spin-free spacesuit and an automatic parachute release.
  • His wife had him write his own obituary and farewell video to his children so he could understand the gravity of this undertaking.
  • “Excellence is approaching a problem and trying to find the best possible way through it.”