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Black History: Inventions That Changed The World
LONNIE G. JOHNSON
Famous Black inventor and scientist Lonnie G. Johnson probably didn't have that little scenario in mind when he in- vented the Super Soaker squirt gun, but it is one of the count- less memories that can be recalled by those who were young enough to enjoy the Super Soaker after its release in 1989.
Johnson's resume boasts work with the US Air Force and
NASA (including work on the Galileo Jupiter probe and Mars
Observer project), a nomination for astronaut training and more
than 40 patents, but it's for a squirt gun that he's best known.
Johnson conceived of a novelty water gun powered by air
pressure in 1982 when he conducted an experiment at home
on a heat pump that used water instead of Freon. This experi-
mentation, which resulted in Johnson shooting a stream of water across his bathroom into the tub, led directly to the development of the Power Drencher, the precursor to the Super Soaker.
Lonnie G. Johnson now has his own company, Johnson Research and Development, and continues to do work for NASA.
JOHN HENRY THOMPSON
John Henry Thompson
was interested in computer
programming languages at an
early age. He taught himself
several programming lan-
guages such as FORTRAN,
PLI, COBOL and JCL while
working in a New York re-
search facility. Thompson's
goal was to absorb as much
knowledge as possible so he could invent his own com- puter language.
After graduating from high school, he attended MIT where he obtained a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Visual Arts. By combining these two seemingly disparate disciplines, Thompson wanted to bridge the gap between art and technol-
ogy. Four years later as a chief scientist at Macrome- dia he was able to make progress towards this goal.
Thompson used Lingo in one of his better-known computer inventions, Macromedia Director. Macromedia Director is able to incorporate different graphic formats (such as BMP, AVI, JPEG, Quick- Time, PNG, RealVideo and vector graphics) to create multi-media content and applications, thus combin- ing computer programming language with visual art.
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