Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. So it's a holiday here over at iHeart.
Speaker 1: It's Juneteenth, so we have the day off, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring you an episode, and this is an
Speaker 1: episode that originally published back on August tenth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: It is an episode about a really remarkable engineer and inventor,
Speaker 1: and I think it's one of those things that I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed learning about, and I certainly have enjoyed one
Speaker 1: of the inventions, that being the super soaker, something that
Speaker 1: has brought me great joy, especially in the very very
Speaker 1: hot summers of Georgia and the United States. Much of
Speaker 1: it has experienced some pretty record breaking heat waves recently.
Speaker 1: So you know, the idea of an episode about a
Speaker 1: nice way to cool down that's fun and competitive, I
Speaker 1: thought would be a welcome change. So please enjoy this
Speaker 1: episode from August tenth, twenty twenty two, called super Soakers
Speaker 1: and Rocket Science. Since it's summertime when the weather is
Speaker 1: high and you can retright up and touch the sky.
Speaker 1: I figure I can talk about a fun story about
Speaker 1: invention and innovation, something that's near and dear to my heart,
Speaker 1: because these things came out right when I was in
Speaker 1: high school and I thought they were amazing. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the super Soaker line of water guns,
Speaker 1: and not just because that's a toy that has a
Speaker 1: special place in my mind heart, because I loved these
Speaker 1: things when I was a kid, but also because it
Speaker 1: comes from one heck of a pedigree, because that technology
Speaker 1: was the brainchild of a rocket scientist, a NASA engineer.
Speaker 1: That engineer would be Lonnie Johnson, a man who is
Speaker 1: countless incredible achievements to his name. He's got more than
Speaker 1: one hundred patents to his name. Admittedly, the super Soaker
Speaker 1: bit frequently grabs attention first, although when you look at
Speaker 1: his resume, you think, how did this? How was this
Speaker 1: the lead? How was that the headline? Lonnie Johnson was
Speaker 1: born in Mobile, Alabama in nineteen forty nine, and I
Speaker 1: want to mention this right off the bat, Lennie Johnson's black.
Speaker 1: And I say that because we have to take into
Speaker 1: account that along the way he was facing massive challenges
Speaker 1: in the form of systemic racism. So his achievements are incredible,
Speaker 1: and you on top of that, you have to put
Speaker 1: into a take into account rather this issue of racism.
Speaker 1: You know, he was really facing some enormous obstacles. Well.
Speaker 1: Lonnie's father was a veteran of World War Two and
Speaker 1: worked as a civilian driver at an Air Force base
Speaker 1: in Mobile, Alabama, and his mother worked in a laundry
Speaker 1: and as a nurse's aide. So when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: Lonnie became interested in learning how stuff works. I can
Speaker 1: identify with that. His father, on top of being a driver,
Speaker 1: was also kind of a DIY kind of fella. It
Speaker 1: was mostly out of necessity, learning how to fix things
Speaker 1: and occasionally you know, doing odd jobs and stuff. And
Speaker 1: he passed down this DIY you know, philosophy to his children,
Speaker 1: and Lonnie really took that to heart, and sometimes his
Speaker 1: heart would overrule his head, like the time he was
Speaker 1: thirteen and decided to take an engine out of a
Speaker 1: lawnmower and connect it to a go kart he had
Speaker 1: made out of scraps and then went joy riding down
Speaker 1: the highway. Police had to ask him to pull over.
Speaker 1: Probably not the safest activity for a thirteen year old
Speaker 1: to pursue, but it was a demonstration of his love
Speaker 1: of engineering, and his family told lots of stories of
Speaker 1: Lonnie taking stuff apart to learn how it worked, and
Speaker 1: of course, you know, it was the classic story that
Speaker 1: he wasn't always able to put it back together again.
Speaker 1: So sometimes when Lonnie got his hands on something, that
Speaker 1: was the last time that something was gonna work, but
Speaker 1: he would learn in the process. They also told stories
Speaker 1: about the time he tried to make homemade rocket fuel
Speaker 1: and nearly set his family's house on fire. He would
Speaker 1: go to Williamson High School and that was an all
Speaker 1: black high school because this was still in the days
Speaker 1: of segregation here in the South. You know, you had
Speaker 1: schools that were whites only, in schools that were blacks only,
Speaker 1: and so he went to an all black high school.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight, he in his school entered a
Speaker 1: science fair competition that was held at the University of
Speaker 1: Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and his school was the only black
Speaker 1: school that was in attendance at the fair. And he
Speaker 1: Johnson had created a kind of robot. He called it
Speaker 1: the Linux, and it was an air powered device, again
Speaker 1: made out of scrap materials like he had rated junkyards
Speaker 1: and stuff and grabbed things that would be helpful and
Speaker 1: made this robot and it took home first prize. Now, reportedly,
Speaker 1: many at the university were not thrilled that the top
Speaker 1: prize was going to a black student. Johnson earned a
Speaker 1: scholarship to attend the Tuskegee University and there he earned
Speaker 1: a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. He got that degree
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three. Then he pursued postgraduate studies at
Speaker 1: Tuskegee and he earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. So the guy who created the
Speaker 1: super soaker has a master's in nuclear engineering. That's a
Speaker 1: big old whiles up for you, right, Like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: expect that when you pick up a toy that this
Speaker 1: was created by a nuclear engineer. Now, for a short
Speaker 1: while after he graduated from his master's degree, Lonnie Johnson
Speaker 1: worked as a research engineer at Oakridge National Laboratory. That
Speaker 1: was one of the facilities that was involved during the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project. It was established as part of the Manhattan Project.
Speaker 1: In fact, this was when the United States was first
Speaker 1: developing the atomic bomb. During World War two. Of course,
Speaker 1: that would be ancient history by the time Lonnie Johnson
Speaker 1: had joined the team, but Oakridge continues to pioneer research
Speaker 1: in things like nuclear physics, including nuclear fusion and an
Speaker 1: attempt to build a working nuclear fusion reactor, which if
Speaker 1: we do, you ever managed to do one that actually
Speaker 1: creates a sustainable fusion reaction that would be transformative for
Speaker 1: our energy needs, but you know, we have to get
Speaker 1: there first. Well. Johnson would then join the Air Force
Speaker 1: after that, and he was assigned to head the Space
Speaker 1: Nuclear Power Safety Section at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory.
Speaker 1: He stayed there until nineteen seventy nine, and at that
Speaker 1: point he joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and served as
Speaker 1: a senior system's engineer. He began work on the Galileo project,
Speaker 1: so he was part of the Galileo Project team. Galileo
Speaker 1: was a probe that we sent to study Jupiter and
Speaker 1: its moons. That project would ultimately be monumentally successful from
Speaker 1: a scientific perspective. Now, Johnson worked on this early on
Speaker 1: in the program. He would not be part of that
Speaker 1: team when the probe would ultimately launch later in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, but he did work on it early on
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two, Lonney Johnson would actually leave NASA
Speaker 1: and return to the Air Force and he was now
Speaker 1: an Advanced Space Systems Requirements Officer at the Strategic Air
Speaker 1: Command Headquarters. He would also serve as the chief of
Speaker 1: the Data Management Branch of Strategic Air Command Test and
Speaker 1: Evaluation Squadron at Edward's Air Force Base. He was one
Speaker 1: of the engineers who would also work on the development
Speaker 1: of the Stealth Bomber, which was a super secret project
Speaker 1: at the time. Johnson actually talked about how he wouldn't
Speaker 1: even be able to tell his wife what he was
Speaker 1: working on at the time because it was classified as
Speaker 1: top secret. He would pop back over to NASA's Jet
Speaker 1: Propulsion Laboratory in nineteen eighty seven to work on the
Speaker 1: Cassini project. Cassini was a probe that we sent to
Speaker 1: study Saturn, and he was also at work on a
Speaker 1: project that would unexpectedly evolve in to the super Soaker. Now,
Speaker 1: that was something that he had been kind of working
Speaker 1: on on and off for several years. You see, Lonnie
Speaker 1: Johnson did not set out to make a new kind
Speaker 1: of water gun, you know, a water gun that would
Speaker 1: leave those little old squirt guns far behind. He wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to create a weapon of mass saturation. It was
Speaker 1: not his dream to grant battlefield superiority to the kid
Speaker 1: who could go out and buy a water gun capable
Speaker 1: of shooting streams of water further than any other on
Speaker 1: the market. Lannie Johnson was trying to do something else entirely.
Speaker 1: He was trying to solve a very tricky problem. He
Speaker 1: wanted to create a heat pump that used water instead
Speaker 1: of free on as a refrigerant, and he started on
Speaker 1: this work way back in the early nineteen eighties. So
Speaker 1: he did this while he was at the Air Force
Speaker 1: working on the Stealth Bomber. So he couldn't talk about
Speaker 1: the stealth bomber work, but he could talk about his
Speaker 1: sort of personal project, which was trying to suss out
Speaker 1: if there would be a way to make a working
Speaker 1: heat pump, an effective heat pump using water. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about heat pumps and how they work
Speaker 1: and why it was important to try and find an
Speaker 1: alternative to free on, so that we can have an
Speaker 1: understanding of what it was that was fueling his innovation
Speaker 1: and ultimately would spawn the super soaker. But Before we
Speaker 1: get to all of that, let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about heat pumps. Now. The heat pumps I'm
Speaker 1: talking about here, they work in a way that's similar
Speaker 1: to an air conditioner. In fact, there are several elements
Speaker 1: in heat pumps that are identical to things you would
Speaker 1: find in an air conditioner, except a heat pump can
Speaker 1: potentially transfer heat inside a building or outside a building.
Speaker 1: Thus it can either heat or cool a building using
Speaker 1: one system. Air Conditioners are not like that. They are
Speaker 1: a one way thing, right. They pull heat out of
Speaker 1: a building and they bring cool air in. But that's it.
Speaker 1: You can't heat a building with an air conditioner. You
Speaker 1: need a separate system. You need a furnace. So a
Speaker 1: heat bump can do both. And technically a heat pump
Speaker 1: can also be a one way type of deal. It
Speaker 1: could also be like an air conditioner, or it could
Speaker 1: be like a furnace. If you wanted where it could
Speaker 1: not reverse. The reverse is only made possible by using
Speaker 1: a reversing valve. But that's the thing is that a
Speaker 1: heat pump can do that. You can have a reversing
Speaker 1: valve installed within the system and you change where the
Speaker 1: heat is being pumped. Really, that's all it is. It's
Speaker 1: all a heat transfer system. It transfers heat from one
Speaker 1: location to another. When you're heating a building, it means
Speaker 1: you're taking heat from outside and bringing it inside. And
Speaker 1: when you're cooling a building, you're taking the heat from
Speaker 1: inside and you're putting it outside. That's really all there
Speaker 1: is to it. But how does it do that well?
Speaker 1: I could technically do a full episode about this, but
Speaker 1: I'll try and keep it short. It's also a little
Speaker 1: tricky to talk about when you don't have visual aids,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna do our best. So your typical air
Speaker 1: to air heat pump solution, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different types of heat pumps. We'll talk about air to
Speaker 1: air because one they're the most common and two they're
Speaker 1: really simple. But your basic air to air heat bump
Speaker 1: solution consists of a pair of heat exchangers. You have
Speaker 1: one heat exchanger that's outdoors and you have one heat
Speaker 1: exchanger that's indoors. These are connected via pipes and a
Speaker 1: reversing valve that allows the flow to reverse directions, and
Speaker 1: there's a compressor and there's also some other valves, expansion valves,
Speaker 1: that control the flow of refrigerant in the system and
Speaker 1: bypasses for those expansion valves. That's also important. So I'll
Speaker 1: talk about expansion valve one and two for the sake
Speaker 1: of this description so that you can understand why they exist.
Speaker 1: And really you only need two if you do have
Speaker 1: a reversing heat pump system. If it's just going in
Speaker 1: one direction, you just need one expansion pump and that's it.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to have a bypass. It's only
Speaker 1: if you want to both heat and cool a building
Speaker 1: with a heat pump that you would need two of them.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the compressor, because really that's where
Speaker 1: the journey begins. And the compressor's job is to compress
Speaker 1: the refrigerant that's flowing through this system. Now, compressing a
Speaker 1: fluid in this case, it's essentially a vapor, it causes
Speaker 1: not just the pressure to increase, but it also causes
Speaker 1: the temperature of that fluid to increase. So what you
Speaker 1: end up with is a super heated vapor under very
Speaker 1: high pressure, and you allow that to travel through the
Speaker 1: lines out from the compressor. And let's say in this case,
Speaker 1: it's the winter and we want to heat the inside
Speaker 1: of our house. So we would have a system set
Speaker 1: so that the hot, high pressure vapor travels to the
Speaker 1: indoor heat exchanger. Now, this is essentially coils of tubeing
Speaker 1: made out of a material that conducts heat efficiently, like copper. Right,
Speaker 1: So this super high pressure, very hot vapor goes through
Speaker 1: these coils of tubing. Behind the coil of tubing, you
Speaker 1: have a fan. The fan blows cooler air across these
Speaker 1: hot coils, and that carries some of that thermal energy,
Speaker 1: some of that heat away from the coils. That's what's
Speaker 1: providing heat to the house. That's where the warm air
Speaker 1: is coming out of the vents. It's because that air
Speaker 1: was blown across these very hot coils and some of
Speaker 1: that heat transferred to the air and thus is warming
Speaker 1: your house. So the cool air starts to pull away
Speaker 1: some of that thermal energy. Well. As the thermal energy
Speaker 1: goes down inside this fluid, then the fluid itself begins
Speaker 1: to condense, it begins to convert from gas to liquid.
Speaker 1: And it's still hot, it's still had a high pressure,
Speaker 1: it's just not quite as high pressure as it was
Speaker 1: when it entered into the heat exchanger, and it's not
Speaker 1: quite as hot as it was. But this heated liquid
Speaker 1: will bypass expansion valve number one, So it goes around
Speaker 1: this valve, it doesn't go through it. The expansion valve.
Speaker 1: If you can think of it as pointing in a direction,
Speaker 1: it's pointing back the way this liquid has come. So
Speaker 1: it bypasses this valve. Then it goes through expansion valve
Speaker 1: number two. That's point in the opposite way. Now, an
Speaker 1: expansion valve allows this pressurized liquid to expand, for its
Speaker 1: volume to expand. Well, that means that the pressure of
Speaker 1: the liquid drops suddenly, as does its temperature. That's the
Speaker 1: relationship here. When you've got high pressure, you've got high temperature.
Speaker 1: When you've got low pressure, you've got low temperature. So
Speaker 1: this expansion valve allows for the rapid expansion of this
Speaker 1: liquid into a kind of a mixture of liquid and
Speaker 1: vapor that is much cooler in temperature. This mixture then
Speaker 1: passes through the coils in the outdoor heat exchanger. That's
Speaker 1: just blowing ambient air across the coils. Well, the temperature
Speaker 1: of the refrigerant has now dropped so low that even
Speaker 1: in the winter time, the air outside is typically warmer
Speaker 1: than the refrigerant is so it can be very cold
Speaker 1: outside and still be warm enough to warm up the
Speaker 1: refriger quite a bit, and so a little bit of
Speaker 1: thermal energy gets transferred into this fluid. The refrigerant then
Speaker 1: brings along some of that thermal energy, and it gets
Speaker 1: pumped back through the reversing valve to go back into
Speaker 1: the compressor, and then the whole thing starts up again. Right,
Speaker 1: the compressor compresses this mixture of vapor and liquid that's
Speaker 1: cooler into a high pressure vapor that is very high
Speaker 1: temperature and puts it back through the system again. Now,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to cool your house, this whole system
Speaker 1: moves in reverse. So the compressor still compresses the refrigerant,
Speaker 1: still makes it very hot, but now it goes to
Speaker 1: the outdoor heat exchanger, which takes away some of that
Speaker 1: thermal energy and allows the superheated high pressure vapor to
Speaker 1: condense into hot, slightly less hot, and slightly less pressurized
Speaker 1: liquid that then bypasses expansion valve too. It goes to
Speaker 1: expansion valve of one, expands into the very low pressure,
Speaker 1: low temperature mixture of vapor and liquid, moves through the
Speaker 1: indoor heat exchanger, which is blowing warm air across these coils.
Speaker 1: The coils are very very cold, so then you get
Speaker 1: cool air blowing into your house, and then the fluid
Speaker 1: continues on back to the compressor. Now, the reason I
Speaker 1: give all that is because you know you have to
Speaker 1: understand those basic pieces. But why was Johnson working on
Speaker 1: an improvement or attempting to create an improved heat bump. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because the typical heat bump was using free on
Speaker 1: as the refrigerant. Now freeon is technically called dichlora diflora methane,
Speaker 1: and this stuff has the useful trait of having a
Speaker 1: boiling point that's all the way down to minus twenty
Speaker 1: nine point eight celsius or minus twenty one point six
Speaker 1: for fahrenheit. Now, remember, like water's got a boiling point
Speaker 1: of one hundred degrees celsius or two hundred and twelve fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: That's pretty hot, But free on it'll boil off into
Speaker 1: a gas at negative twenty nine point eight celsius. So
Speaker 1: you see that even in cold winters, there's still enough
Speaker 1: heat in the ambient air to boil off the refrigerant
Speaker 1: in the heat exchanger, unless you're in like a super
Speaker 1: duper cold environment where you would be kind of stuck.
Speaker 1: The heat pump would not be a big help. However,
Speaker 1: freeon has some drawbacks. Now, a big drawback is that
Speaker 1: it contributes to environmental damage. It can it is a
Speaker 1: chemical that, when released into the atmosphere, can do massive
Speaker 1: damage to the ozone layer. Now, this was such a
Speaker 1: concern in the nineteen nineties that countries agreed to ban
Speaker 1: the manufacture of free on. First developed nations all agreed
Speaker 1: to stop manufacturing free on in the mid nineties, but
Speaker 1: for developing countries it was considered to be kind of
Speaker 1: I mean, it's looked on as a complicated situation. Right.
Speaker 1: You have a country that's on its way toward development
Speaker 1: telling it, hey, you can't benefit from the same stuff
Speaker 1: that we benefited from because it turns out that's harmful.
Speaker 1: That's a complicated thing. So those countries actually had until
Speaker 1: twenty ten to stop making free on. These days, we
Speaker 1: still use free on, but only in very specific use cases,
Speaker 1: like as a fire retardant in like submarines or aircraft.
Speaker 1: So Lonnie Johnson wanted to create a new kind of
Speaker 1: heat pump that would just use plain old water as
Speaker 1: a refrigerant instead of free on. So there was this
Speaker 1: growing concern about free on and similar chemicals and their
Speaker 1: environmental impact. But this was before countries had decided to
Speaker 1: ban the stuff, and so really Johnson was just trying
Speaker 1: to think of an alternative that would be and you know,
Speaker 1: have less of an environmental impact, and water would definitely
Speaker 1: fit the bill if you could make it work. So
Speaker 1: he's kind of thinking this through and creating a system,
Speaker 1: and part of that meant that he machined his own nozzles.
Speaker 1: So he used machining equipment to make nozzles for his
Speaker 1: heat pump design, and one day, while testing out his
Speaker 1: nozzles in his bathroom, he shot a tight stream of
Speaker 1: water clear across the bathroom in a very focused stream,
Speaker 1: and then got in to thinking about water guns. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk more about water guns and their design,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your classic water gun. So this is
Speaker 1: pre super soaker, the little squirt toy version of water guns,
Speaker 1: the kinds of that you might find in like a
Speaker 1: dollar store or something. Now, your typical water gun has
Speaker 1: a spring loaded trigger, and that trigger activates a lever.
Speaker 1: That lever in turn activates a very small pump inside
Speaker 1: the water gun, and the pump's job is to pump
Speaker 1: water from a reservoir and the gun. Often with these
Speaker 1: squirt guns, the entire interior of the gun acts as
Speaker 1: a reservoir and it pumps the water through a plastic
Speaker 1: tube and out a narrow path at the end of
Speaker 1: the gun's barrel, where a nozzle focuses the escaping water
Speaker 1: into a stream. So let's take that step by step
Speaker 1: to understand exactly what's working from a mechanical perspective. So
Speaker 1: you've got your plastic tube that extends into the water reservoir.
Speaker 1: If you follow that plastic tube from the reservoir up,
Speaker 1: you'll see that it leads to a pump. And the
Speaker 1: pump is a very simple thing. It's a cylinder and
Speaker 1: it's a piston. And the piston, when you pull the trigger,
Speaker 1: will move into the cylinder. Now, when the piston moves
Speaker 1: into the cylinder, it forces water or air or whatever
Speaker 1: out of the cylinder. Right, it can't be in the
Speaker 1: cylinder the piston's there. Also, inside the cylinder is a spring,
Speaker 1: So when the piston enters the cylinder, it compresses the spring,
Speaker 1: and when you release the trigger, it allows the spring
Speaker 1: to expand to full size. That forces the piston back
Speaker 1: out of the cylinder again, and when that happens, there's
Speaker 1: a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum, so water and
Speaker 1: or air flows back into the cylinder because it's been
Speaker 1: left empty by the piston's movement. Right. So when you
Speaker 1: pair this with a couple of one way valves in
Speaker 1: those tubes, you have yourself an effective pump. So one
Speaker 1: of those valves will allow water to move from the
Speaker 1: reservoir into the cylinder. So when you let go of
Speaker 1: the trigger and the piston is moving out of the cylinder,
Speaker 1: the pump sucks water up from the tube, but the
Speaker 1: water cannot flow back in the opposite direction. This is
Speaker 1: also why you sometimes have to prime the old water pistols.
Speaker 1: You have to pull the trigger a few times because
Speaker 1: you actually have to use that piston to suction water
Speaker 1: up from the reservoir to go into the pump in
Speaker 1: order to have it ready to push the water out
Speaker 1: of the gun. Now, the other one way valve leads
Speaker 1: from the pump to the nozzle in the gun's barrel.
Speaker 1: So when you pull the trigger. It pushes the piston
Speaker 1: through the cylinder, forces water out of the pump, and
Speaker 1: the only place the water can go is through this tube,
Speaker 1: through that one way valve, and out through the nozzle
Speaker 1: because the other one way valve blocks the water from
Speaker 1: going back into the reservoir. Now, because there is a
Speaker 1: one way valve right there heading to the barrel of
Speaker 1: the gun, that means when you let go of the
Speaker 1: trigger and you have the suctioning action happening again, when
Speaker 1: the piston is moving out of the cylinder, that one
Speaker 1: way valve seals shut, so air cannot come back in
Speaker 1: through the gun barrel. The only place where the suction
Speaker 1: can pull anything through is through the reservoir because that
Speaker 1: one way valve allows water to go from the reservoir
Speaker 1: back into the pump. You have to have those one
Speaker 1: way valves or else if you were to lego of
Speaker 1: the trigger and it could just pull air from the barrel,
Speaker 1: then you wouldn't suction air up out of the reservoir anymore.
Speaker 1: You could have a full water gun and keep pulling
Speaker 1: that trigger and nothing happens, because all it's doing is
Speaker 1: pushing air in and out through the barrel of the gun.
Speaker 1: You have to have that valve there to help seal
Speaker 1: the system properly. Now that's your basic squirt gun. Johnson
Speaker 1: figured he could do a bit better now. His homemade
Speaker 1: nozzle was just one part of his new invention, of course,
Speaker 1: and Johnson wouldn't work on this all on his own.
Speaker 1: He would kind of work with another inventor named Bruce
Speaker 1: Dendrade to kind of get a better squirt gun design.
Speaker 1: And a big part of it was something that heat
Speaker 1: pumps deal with all the time, which is pressurizing a fluid. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously a toy water gun is not going to create
Speaker 1: the same levels of pressurization as an industrial compressor in
Speaker 1: a heat exchange system. That would be bonkers. But a
Speaker 1: pressurization chamber would provide the oomph to force water out
Speaker 1: at a high velocity through the nozzle, which means you
Speaker 1: could shoot streams of water much further than your standard
Speaker 1: little squirt gun. So the idea was you'd use a
Speaker 1: hand pump on the gun to pump air into this
Speaker 1: pressurization chamber, at least originally. Later models of super soakers
Speaker 1: would actually use water and air rather than just air
Speaker 1: to build up pressure. Valves would prevent the air from
Speaker 1: escaping back out, so you would pump air in, but
Speaker 1: the air could not escape out, and you just keep
Speaker 1: pumping and pumping until you had essentially reach capacity of
Speaker 1: the canister. You could not physically move the pumpump any further.
Speaker 1: Later on, you would even have failsafe so that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't allow you to pump any more once it reached
Speaker 1: a certain amount of pressure, and that way you would
Speaker 1: be less likely to break your new toy. When you
Speaker 1: pulled the trigger, you would essentially open up an escape
Speaker 1: valve for all that pressurized air that was inside this canister,
Speaker 1: and the air having a path of release, would immediately
Speaker 1: follow it. And there's only one path available because of
Speaker 1: those valves. It would only be able to go in
Speaker 1: one direction, and this escaping air would end up pushing
Speaker 1: water out of a secondary reservoir in the gun through
Speaker 1: the nozzle at the end, shooting a stream at an
Speaker 1: impressive distance. Now that's a little more complicated than I
Speaker 1: just described. So, like I said, there are two water reservoirs.
Speaker 1: The first reservoir, the primary one, is the one you
Speaker 1: would actually fill up when you would get ready to
Speaker 1: do battle. You would open up a little tab in
Speaker 1: the gun, you would fill it up with water, close
Speaker 1: the tab in there. That was the primary water reservoir.
Speaker 1: The second water reservoir would fill up as you were
Speaker 1: pumping pressurized air into the compression chamber. And it was
Speaker 1: the water in this secondary reservoir that would actually shoot
Speaker 1: out the nozzle when you pulled the trigger. So when
Speaker 1: the pressurized air was released, it was pushing water out
Speaker 1: through this secondary reservoir, not the primary one. And again
Speaker 1: you would use one way valves to control fluid flow.
Speaker 1: That guaranteed that fluids would only be able to go
Speaker 1: in one direction throughout this system. Because if you don't
Speaker 1: have that, then you just really have a water gun
Speaker 1: where water is sloshing through tubes but not really going anywhere. Now,
Speaker 1: Johnson initially looked to self fund production of his invention,
Speaker 1: and he gave his daughter a prototype of this kind
Speaker 1: of using like a two liter empty soda bottle to
Speaker 1: act as the compression chamber. And then he watched as
Speaker 1: his seven year old daughter was absolute slutely wrecking shot
Speaker 1: on that Air Force base. She was just dominant in
Speaker 1: any water gun fights. However, he discovered that manufacturing is
Speaker 1: a complicated and expensive process. I mean, it costs a
Speaker 1: lot of money to first establish a production sequence, right
Speaker 1: if you're building something new, then you have to go
Speaker 1: through and tool that sequence precisely to whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're building, and that's very expensive. So Johnson didn't have
Speaker 1: like two hundred thousand bucks just lying around to fund
Speaker 1: an initial batch of one thousand super soakers. So instead
Speaker 1: he started to look around to see if he could
Speaker 1: find a toy company that he could partner with. But
Speaker 1: that took a long time. And you have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind that while he's doing this, he's also kind
Speaker 1: of working on stuff like stealth bombers, and so it's
Speaker 1: not like he had copious amounts of free time on
Speaker 1: his hands to pursue his dream of making a really
Speaker 1: cool squirt gun. So his search took seven years. He
Speaker 1: happened to encounter a toy company while he was at
Speaker 1: the American International Toy Fair in New York. He was
Speaker 1: there with his pitch and he got some interest from
Speaker 1: a Philadelphia based company called Laramie. Now that company didn't
Speaker 1: exactly have the best image in the toy world. It
Speaker 1: was mostly known for making knockoffs of popular toy brands.
Speaker 1: But Laramie was showing an interest, and that was enough
Speaker 1: for Johnson because he was not really finding any bites
Speaker 1: at this point. So he was invited to travel to
Speaker 1: Philadelphia and to give a demonstration of his prototype, which
Speaker 1: again used like an empty two liter soda bottle as
Speaker 1: the compression chamber. So you know, it was this janky
Speaker 1: collection of plastic and tubes and this soda bottle. It
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily look really polished itself, and the Laramie folks
Speaker 1: were saying, well, does it work? And then he shot
Speaker 1: water clear across the conference room and he immediately won
Speaker 1: the admiration of the Laramie executives and they struck a
Speaker 1: deal with Johnson. They licensed the design of his invention,
Speaker 1: and so that was that. That was where Johnson ended
Speaker 1: up getting this lucrative licensing deal for his invention, which
Speaker 1: by the way, he had already patented. Hilaramie would produce
Speaker 1: the first model of this which it wasn't called the
Speaker 1: super Soaker when it first came out. This was around
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety, so this model was called the Power Drencher,
Speaker 1: and I think that's just as awesome a name as
Speaker 1: super Soaker. It's not alliterative, so that's an issue, but
Speaker 1: Power Drencher does sound like it's like it's a force
Speaker 1: to be reckoned with. But the next year was when
Speaker 1: the company would rebrand the toy as the super Soaker,
Speaker 1: and that name stuck, and it also became insanely popular.
Speaker 1: Like you occasionally see these trends and toys where a
Speaker 1: toy will just be like the must have toy of
Speaker 1: the season. That was what the super Soaker was when
Speaker 1: it really debuted under that name, was they were flying
Speaker 1: off store shelves. People were crazy about them, including me,
Speaker 1: and I did have an original super Soaker, not the
Speaker 1: Power Drencher, but when it was rebranded, I did have
Speaker 1: one of those when I was a kid, and I
Speaker 1: loved that thing. Now. In an interview with the Henry
Speaker 1: Ford Innovation Nation, Johnson said that it took some engineering
Speaker 1: to bring all the elements together to make this work,
Speaker 1: but when you compare it to rocket science, it's relatively simple, which,
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta say, I love that perspective. Hasbro
Speaker 1: would subsequently acquire Laramie, so the super Soaker brand would
Speaker 1: move over to Hasbro. Johnson would head on back to NASA.
Speaker 1: He you know, I'd worked at the Air Force he
Speaker 1: had made a killing by licensing this invention to Laramie
Speaker 1: and then wanted to continue his his engineering work with NASA.
Speaker 1: And then after that he worked a little bit with
Speaker 1: Hasbro to bring new innovations and improvements to its line
Speaker 1: of NERF guns. In fact, Hasbro would group super Soaker
Speaker 1: under the NERF brand, so you find Nerf super Soakers
Speaker 1: these days. And that's kind of funny too, because actually,
Speaker 1: when Johnson was a kid, I didn't mention this earlier,
Speaker 1: but he created a kind of proto NERF gun back
Speaker 1: in his childhood, used some bamboo to act as kind
Speaker 1: of like a barrel of a gun, and he used
Speaker 1: China berries as ammunition, these little softberry things that grow
Speaker 1: all over the place here in the Southeast and use
Speaker 1: pressurized air to shoot them. So it was kind of
Speaker 1: like a NERF gun, just it was shooting China berries
Speaker 1: instill a little foam darts. And Johnson created his own
Speaker 1: design laboratory right here in Atlanta, Georgia called Johnson R
Speaker 1: and D. And there at the lab, Johnson and his
Speaker 1: team are researching all sorts of fields, including environmental technology
Speaker 1: for alternative power generation solutions, which is pretty darn awesome
Speaker 1: as well as for the super soaker. It would continue
Speaker 1: to evolve under Hasbro Dondrade would incorporate a type of
Speaker 1: bladder in future super soaker water guns, and the bladder
Speaker 1: would serve both as kind of a pressure chamber and
Speaker 1: a water reservoir. When you would pump the super soaker
Speaker 1: that had these bladders in them, it would force water
Speaker 1: and air into this bladder, thus expanding the bladder. But
Speaker 1: the bladder was made a very stiff material and it
Speaker 1: resisted having this stuff pumped into it. So you would
Speaker 1: get this compression, this pressurization, that interior pressure would grow
Speaker 1: and when you pulled the trigger, it would allow the
Speaker 1: pressure to escape and you could, you know, have longer
Speaker 1: pressure with these types of super soakers, so you could
Speaker 1: fire it a few more times than having to like,
Speaker 1: you know, pump for five seconds and then fire, then
Speaker 1: pump for five seconds again. These days, there are actually
Speaker 1: a several different supersoaker models, I mean tons have come
Speaker 1: out since it debuted in nineteen ninety. A lot of
Speaker 1: the the current super soaker models actually use a simpler
Speaker 1: pump mechanism. Some of them are just essentially sucking up
Speaker 1: water into a pump and then pushing it out in
Speaker 1: high volumes. So in other words, it's working on a
Speaker 1: very similar principle as those older squirt guns. It's just larger.
Speaker 1: Your pump is bigger inside these types of guns instead
Speaker 1: of being a little bitty thing that's a spring activated
Speaker 1: trigger mechanism. It's typically like a pump handle mechanism. But
Speaker 1: it's still when you break down a simple pump and
Speaker 1: not using a pressurized container like the original Super Soaker did.
Speaker 1: Others use motorized pumps, so you have like a battery
Speaker 1: operated pump that fires the water in the reservoir. But
Speaker 1: all of these gut their start thanks to a rocket
Speaker 1: scientist who just wanted to make a better heat pump.
Speaker 1: And that's it. For this episode, I wanted to give
Speaker 1: Lonnie Johnson a shout out. The guy is incredibly inspiring you.
Speaker 1: If you are not familiar with his work, you'd need
Speaker 1: to look him up. Not just the Super Soaker stuff.
Speaker 1: He also just comes across incredibly personable in interviews. He
Speaker 1: is humble and inquisitive and curious and very very fun
Speaker 1: to listen to, So I highly recommend you check him
Speaker 1: out if you have not before, and if you would
Speaker 1: like to suggest a topic for me to cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: different ways you can do that. One is to download
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app scree to download, navigate over to the
Speaker 1: tech Stuff portion of that, and there's a little microphone
Speaker 1: icon there where you can leave a thirty second voice
Speaker 1: message up to thirty seconds anyway, doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: a full thirty seconds, and let me know what you
Speaker 1: would like me to cover in the future, or you
Speaker 1: can drop me a line on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is tech Stuff HSW and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.