Black Pioneers of Science and Invention

A readable, perceptive account of the lives of fourteen gifted innovators who have played important roles in scientific and industrial progress. The achievements of Benjamin Banneker, Granville T. Woods, George Washington Carver, and others have made jobs easier, saved countless lives, and in many cases, altered the course of history.

11 Black-Owned Businesses That You Should Know and Support

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart, especially as a minority, given all of the competition. In fact, it takes diligence, perseverance, follow through, hard work, and a lot of it to be successful in any business. The thought of pursuing your dream is nice, but putting action behind that thought is just the preliminary phase, and where the hard work begins. And, the going doesn’t actually get tough until you start building your business with your blood, sweat, and your tears. As a fellow entrepreneur, I know about all of this a little too well, but in the end, it’s worth it, because dreaming isn’t just something that we do at night, dreams are meant to be lived.

Black-owned businesses have progressed rapidly over the years, and according to the most updated figures in 2007, provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 1.9 million companies owned by black entrepreneurs, so imagine how many more there are to date. Supporting these businesses not only helps the entrepreneurs but also puts money back into the black community. BOBs are depending on the support of their community in order to survive and to thrive. With so many competitors in each industry, things can take a turn for the worst quickly if a business is not careful, therefore, we must be there for each other, diligently supporting. There is power in the black dollar, so why not put that power into assisting a community that understands your heritage and history, and values your life in general. While doing all of this, you should expect a quality product or service in return, and it becomes a win-win for both parties involved.

I’ve made it easy by compiling this list. Included are 11 black entrepreneurs that I highly recommend supporting, along with detailed information on each of their businesses. The majority are online businesses and the others that aren’t, be sure to recommend to both friends and family located in the respective areas.

LeShawnda Fitzgerald is director of Ready For Spanish of Nashville, Tennessee. Fitzgerald created Ready For Spanish to meet parent demands for quality language instruction in her city. She has since expanded her program online with a training program for Pre-K and Kindergarten teachers and schools that want to teach Spanish to their students as well as an online program for adult learners who want to speak Spanish quickly and easily. Her business prepares children and adults to live and work in a global society. www.readyforspanish.com

Marvette Cofield, Realtor of Berkshire Hathaway Home Service, Select Realty is located in Dumfries, Virginia. As a Realtor, Cofield’s desire is that each and every client has a hassle-free real estate experience, as she partners with and helps them to attain their goal. Through communication, education, and information, she assists in locating the perfect home for her client’s lifestyle. Cofield’s clients are in good hands when working with her! www.homeofyourdreamz.com

Latorie Walker, owner & CEO of Aspire Early Learning Academy I & II located in West Columbia and Lexington, South Carolina, offers a boutique-style learning environment where children are taught with individualized developmental plans and a curriculum that adequately prepares each child for kindergarten. AspireELA, strives for excellence while preparing their students for a bright future in a safe, loving, and fun environment that focuses on academics. The teaching team at AspireELA are patient with all of their students and are well experienced in the field of Early Childhood. They are committed to ensuring that every child receives the best opportunity to produce the foundation for a fruitful, educational, and life-long experience. www.aspireearlylearningacademy.com

Brittney S. Carter, CEO of B. Carter Solutions L.L.C. located in the Washington, DC metro area was launched in April 2015. Carter decided that she wanted to start a company that offers “solutions” to a consumer’s problem under one umbrella. As a one-stop shop for public relations, social media management, and professional development needs, she relishes the opportunity to provide consumers with operational convenience.  B. Carter Solutions is committed to elevate imaginative solutions by focusing on the mission behind the vision. They desire to measure the success for their clients through awareness, innovation, and out-of-the-box strategies sticking to their mantra, “Where Vision Meets Strategy.” www.bcartersolutions.com

Shanta Johnson, the owner of Designed by Shanta L.L.C. is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Johnson offers web design and development services to entrepreneurs and businesses of all sorts. She is passionate about her craft and enjoys making websites to fit her clients’ needs. When choosing to work with Johnson, you are guaranteed not only a website that serves a purpose but a positive experience that exceeds your expectations. She is professional, experienced, and committed to going above and beyond for her clients. www.designedbyshanta.com

Dyron J. Stephens, DrPH, CPH is president and senior partner, along with Richard Stephens II, MBA, who is the vice president and managing partner of Pierian Spring Innovations, L.L.C., located in Decatur, G.A. Pierian Spring Innovations, L.L.C. is the premier management consultancy and health innovations firm, which is founded in and on the belief that improving the well-being of others is the greatest enterprise any entity could embark upon. As a result of this, every action and initiative taken by the firm reflects this dedication to bettering the health-related quality of life of all individuals. The firm operates globally with a professional network of offices throughout the United States and Nigeria.

Keli N. Burke of East Lansdowne, P.A. is the independent business owner of Total Life Changes, which has been around for the past 16 years. The results-driven company has products that include all natural ingredients, which allows gradual weight loss, detoxification, and improved digestive system, and that is just a few of many benefits. Keli is committed to the health and wellness of her clients, and she goes above and beyond to ensure that her clients receive one-on-one care and attention based on their personal needs and goals.

Shade Adu of Savvy Solutions Consulting, L.L.C., located in Union, N.J., believes that entrepreneurs benefit from leveraging social media and live-streaming. Savvy Solutions aims to create digital branding and online marketing solutions for women entrepreneurs who need support. Savvy Solutions is here to provide strategic solutions for coaches and creatives online. Social media isn’t going anywhere, and small businesses that learn how to strategically leverage these platforms will have a competitive advantage. Entrepreneurs should support Savvy Solutions because our goal is to serve women entrepreneurs who want to turn their idea into a profitable online brand.

Ahesha Catalano and her team at Profitable Retreats in Burbank, C.A., assist individuals, couples, speakers, entrepreneurs, health and fitness professionals, organizations, and corporations plan and execute profitable retreats. They give clients a step-by-step guide to ensure the retreat is a wonderful experience for all, and of course, profitable. Anyone who has been thinking of planning a retreat or traveling with a group of friends or family owes it to themselves to see just how profitable their trip can be.

Chantilly Oliver-Cross is CEO of Elegant Cuisines, located in Fredericksburg, V.A. Elegant Cuisines, L.L.C. is a personal chef and catering company with over fourteen years of phenomenal service, and has been in business for two years. Their services are available for all business, private, and social events. When choosing Elegant Cuisines for a special event, it’s the marriage of southern hospitality with a touch of elegance. Elegant Cuisines has been voted a locally renowned, best personal chef and catering company in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area.

Melodie Narain, CEO and founder of Sole Savers, located in Maryland, launched her business in September 2015. Melodie realized that she could no longer wear heels for more than a few hours. After discussing this for a few months with her mother, Teresa Thomas, who could no longer wear heels due to numerous knee surgeries, she realized that there had to be others who faced these same challenges when it came to fashion and comfort. After months of studying trends, Melodie developed a product that she believed would be a perfect remedy which would be a stylish, affordable, and convenient alternative to their fabulous heels.

Given all of this “black magic,” which black-owned businesses will you commit to supporting today?

Source: http://www.blackenterprise.com/small-business/11-black-owned-businesses-know-support/

Dr. Herbert Smitherman

Dr. Herbert Smitherman was a pioneering executive and professional chemist at Proctor & Gamble who led the way for other African-Americans at the prestigious company in the 1960s. He was the first black person with a doctorate hired at Proctor & Gamble.

With a Ph.D in physical organic chemistry, Dr. Smitherman developed a number of incredibly popular patents, including Crest toothpaste, Safeguard soap, Bounce fabric softeners, Biz, Folgers Coffee and Crush soda, to name a few. Not only are they still on the shelves, but many of them are on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center in the featured exhibit, “America I AM: The African-American Imprint.”

Nicknamed the “Jackie Robinson of Proctor & Gamble,” Dr. Smitherman spent 29 years there before turning in his labcoat to work as a professor at Wilberforce University. But after serving at the historically black college, Smitherman turned his attention to starting a high school called the Western Hills Design Technology School to help black students perform better in math and science.

A child of the south, Dr. Smitherman’s family lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where his father served as a reverend. A young Smitherman would see his father’s church burn down twice during their push for voting registration and voting rights.

He died this year on Oct. 9.

Dr. Smitherman’s legacy was left in his association with HBCUs, specifically his alma mater, Tuskegee Institute, where he met his wife of 51 years; Howard University, where he got his PH.D, and Wilberforce University, where he enlightened many students on his world of historical innovation.

Source: http://blackhistorymonth.blackamericaweb.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=562%3Adr-herbert-smitherman&catid=112%3Ageneral&Itemid=292

South African Student Invents Waterless Bathing

When finding a steady source of portable water is challenge enough in the developing world who has the time  - or water- to take a shower? One South African student may have the answer with a unique, water-less shower gel—that he invented on his dumb phone.

DryBath, as the gel is called, was developed by 22 year old college student Ludwick Marishane in response to the rankness of a friend. Rubbed onto the skin, like Purell, the gel kills bacteria, moisturizes the skin and, unlike Purell, leaves a fresh scent, according to Marishane's company website, Headboy Industries. One packet—priced at $0.50 for rural communities, $1.50 for corporate types—is enough to wash the entire body and kill 99.9-percent of germs, which should cut down on the disease rate in rural areas onset by by poor hygiene. Marishane also sees the technology being adopted by militaries, hotels, and even airlines.
What's really amazing is that Marishane brought the product to market using only his feature phone. From the initial research to building his business plan to developing the patented blend of biocide, bioflavonoids and moisturizers, he did it all without a computer.

Read more at http://www.educateinspirechange.org/2013/06/south-african-student-invents-waterless.html

Henry Sampson (inventor)

Henry T. Thomas Sampson, Jr. (born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1934) is an African-American inventor.
He graduated from high school in 1951 from Lanier High School in Jackson, Mississippi. He then attended Morehouse College for a couple of years before transferring to Purdue University where he became a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He received a Bachelor's degree in science from Purdue University in 1956. He graduated with an MS degree in engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1961. Sampson also received his MS in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1965, and his PhD in 1967.

He is the first African American to earn a Ph.D.in Nuclear Engineering in the United States. Some of his accomplishments include being a member of the United States Navy between the years 1962 and 1964 and earning an Atomic Energy Commission honor between 1964 and 1967. Later he was awarded the Black Image Award from Aerospace Corporation in 1982. He was awarded the Blacks in Engineering, Applied Science Award, and prize for education, by the Los Angeles Council of Black Professional Engineers in 1983. In June 2007, Sampson was married to Laura Howzell Young in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Young-Sampson is a professor in the College of Education at California State University San Bernardino.

Sampson was employed as a research chemical engineer at the U.S. Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, California, in the area of high energy solid propellants and case bonding materials for solid rocket motors. Sampson also served as the Director of Mission Development and Operations of the Space Test Program at the Aeropace Corporation in El Segundo, California. His patents included a binder system for propellants and explosives and a cse bonding system for cast composite propellants. Both inventions are related to solid rocket motors.

On July 6, 1971 he was awarded a patent, with George H. Miley, for a gamma-electrical cell, a device that produces a high voltage from radiation sources, primarily gamma radiation, with proposed goals of generating auxiliary power from the shielding of a nuclear reactor. Additionally, the patent cites the cell's function as a detector with self power and construction cost advantages over previous detectors.

Sampson is a writer and film historian. He wrote the book "Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films," which examines often overlooked African American film makers and entertainers from the first half of the 20th Century. In addition he authored "The Ghost Walks: A Chronological History of Blacks in Show Business, 1865-1910." Sampson produces documentary films on African American film makers. In 2005 he published "Singin' on the Ether Waves: a Chronological History of African Americans in Radio and Television Programming, 1925-1955" (two vols, 1270 pages), Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland, and Oxford, UK, 2005.

Sampson is associated with the Board of Directors of Los Angeles Southwest College Foundation, as well as a technical consultant to the Historical Black Colleges and Universities Program.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Sampson_(inventor)

Smart Button Shoes

I Did It And So Can You!

Joel Williams Jr. is 14 years old and the inventor of the SmartButton. He would like to share his story and accomplishments with you during this video. The story takes place over the past 5 years and documents the exciting adventure along the way. His hopes and goals are that the story motivates you and ultimately sparks your creative skills.

Source: http://www.smartbuttonshoes.com/index.php

What Color Is My World?: The Lost History of African-American Inventors

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball legend and the NBA's alltime leading scorer, champions a lineup
of little-known African-American inventors in this lively, kid-friendly book.

Did you know that James West invented the microphone in your cell phone? That Fred Jones invented the refrigerated truck that makes supermarkets possible? Or that Dr. Percy Julian synthesized cortisone from soy, easing untold people's pain? These are just some of the black inventors and innovators scoring big points in this dynamic look at several unsung heroes who shared a desire to improve people's lives. Offering profiles with fast facts on flaps and framed by a funny contemporary story featuring two feisty twins, here is a nod to the minds behind the gamma electric cell and the ice-cream scoop, improvements to traffic lights, open-heart surgery, and more - inventors whose ingenuity and perseverance against great odds made our world safer, better, and brighter.

Black Teenager Invents New Medical Procedure

Young Mr. Tony Hansberry II is only 14 years old, but he has already accomplished something very few people of any age have. Tony invented a new medical procedure that can be used to reduce surgical complications in hysterectomies.

Hansberry interned last summer at the University of Florida’s Center for Simulation Education and Safety Research at Shands Hospital in Jacksonville. It was there that he responded to a call for an improvement to the endo stitch, which is a technique used during hysterectomies. The future doctor came up with his concept in only two days.

Hansberry is a freshman at Darnell Cookman, a Jacksonville, Florida magnet school for gifted students who are interested in medicine. He is the son of a registered nurse and a pastor. The teen’s ultimate goal is to become a neurosurgeon.

Not surprisingly, Tony’s ground-breaking research landed him an invitation to present at a medical conference at the University of Florida, where he captivated an audience of doctors and surgeons.

Angela TenBroeck, the medical lead teacher, said in many ways, Hansberry is a typical student, but she told the Florida Times Union that he is way ahead of his classmates when it comes to surgical skills.

“I would put him up against a first-year med student,” she said. “He’s an outstanding young man. And I’m proud to have him representing us.”

Please understand that students like Tony do not exist in a vacuum. Tony’s parents, friends, and community fostered an environment in which he could learn and thrive. How can we duplicate these types of successes with our children?

The key is to take advantage of existing resources and opportunities, and/or create your own. If your child shows an interest in medicine, ask your pediatrician if your child can shadow her for a day or two. If your child is interested in entrepreneurship, give him projects to do, such as creating a business plan. The possibilities really are endless, and we owe it to our children to help them learn, explore, and develop their talents and interests in a supportive environment.

Stay tuned for our series on educational resources!

Source: http://www.blackimpression.com/tony-hansberry

BlackInventor.com

The Black Inventor Online Museum ™, is a look at the great and often unrecognized pioneers in the field of invention and innovation.

Achievements by Black inventors can be seen as far back as ancient Africa but much of society has no idea that many of the products or devices that make their everyday lives more enjoyable are the result of the hard work and ingenuity of Blacks.

The Black Inventor Online Museum ™, is the first of numerous educational/information web sites presented by Adscape International as a method for disseminating relevant and important information on topics that have often been overlooked in the traditional classroom. By bringing awareness to contributions made by a diverse number of ethnic/social groups, we hope to infuse a greater sense of pride, understanding and enthusiasm, contributing to a greater level of achievement on the part of students and their teachers. Used as a supplemental resource to traditional classroom methods, these sites can be used throughout the year as well as at home.

Source: http://www.blackinventor.com/

Super Soaker

IN MARCH 2003, the independent inventor Lonnie Johnson faced a roomful of high-level military scientists at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Virginia. Johnson had traveled there from his home in Atlanta, seeking research funding for an advanced heat engine he calls the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter, or JTEC (pronounced “jay-tek”). At the time, the JTEC was only a set of mathematical equations and the beginnings of a prototype, but Johnson had made the tantalizing claim that his device would be able to turn solar heat into electricity with twice the efficiency of a photovoltaic cell, and the Office of Naval Research wanted to hear more.

Projected onto the wall was a PowerPoint collage summing up some highlights of Johnson’s career: risk assessment he’d done for the space shuttle Atlantis; work on the nuclear power source for NASA’sGalileo spacecraft; engineering help on the tests that led to the first flight of the B-2 stealth bomber; the development of an energy-dense ceramic battery; and the invention of a remarkable, game-changing weapon that had made him millions of dollars—a weapon that at least one of the men in the room, the father of two small children, recognized immediately as the Super Soaker squirt gun.

Mild-mannered and bespectacled, Johnson opened his presentation by describing the idea behind the JTEC. The device, he explained, would split hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons, and in so doing would convert heat into electricity. Most radically, it would do so without the help of any moving parts. Johnson planned to tell his audience that the JTEC could produce electricity so efficiently that it might make solar power competitive with coal, and perhaps at last fulfill the promise of renewable solar energy. But before he reached that part of his presentation, Richard Carlin, then the head of the Office of Naval Research’s mechanics and energy conversion division, rose from his chair and dismissed Johnson’s brainchild outright. The whole premise for the device relied on a concept that had proven impractical, Carlin claimed, citing a 1981 report co-written by his mentor, the highly regarded electrochemist Robert Osteryoung. Go read the Osteryoung report, Carlin said, and you will see.

End of meeting.

Concerned about what he might have missed in the literature, Johnson returned home and read the inch-thick report, concluding that it addressed an approach quite different from his own. Carlin, it seems, had rejected the concept before fully comprehending it. (When I reached Carlin by phone recently, he said he did not remember the meeting, but he is familiar with the JTEC concept and now thinks that the “principles are fine.”) Nor was Carlin alone at the time. Wherever Johnson pitched the JTEC, the reaction seemed to be the same: no engine could convert heat to electricity at such high efficiency rates without the use of moving parts.

Johnson believed otherwise. He felt that what had doomed his presentation to the Office of Naval Research—and others as well—was a collective failure of imagination. It didn’t help that he was best known as a toy inventor, nor that he was working outside the usual channels of the scientific establishment. Johnson was stuck in a Catch-22: to prove his idea would work, he needed a more robust prototype, one able to withstand the extreme heat of concentrated sunlight. But he couldn’t build such a prototype without research funding. What he needed was a new pitch. Instead of presenting the JTEC as an engine, he would frame it as a high-temperature hydrogen fuel cell, a device that produces electricity chemically rather than mechanically, by stripping hydrogen atoms of their electrons. The description was only partially apt: though both devices use similar components, fuel cells require a constant supply of hydrogen; the JTEC, by contrast, contains a fixed amount of hydrogen sealed in a chamber, and needs only heat to operate. Still, in the fuel-cell context, the device’s lack of moving parts would no longer be a conceptual stumbling block.

Indeed, Johnson had begun trying out this new pitch two months before his naval presentation, in a written proposal he submitted to the Air Force Research Laboratory’s peer-review panel. The reaction, when it came that May, couldn’t have been more different. “Funded just like that,” he told me, snapping his fingers, “because they understood fuel cells—the technology, the references, the literature. The others couldn’t get past this new engine concept.” The Air Force gave Johnson $100,000 for membrane research, and in August 2003 sent a program manager to Johnson’s Atlanta laboratory. “We make a presentation about the JTEC, and he says”—here Johnson, who is black, puts on a Bill-Cosby-doing-a-white-guy voice—“‘Wow, this is exciting!’” A year later, after Johnson had proved he could make a ceramic membrane capable of withstanding temperatures above 400 degrees Celsius, the Air Force gave him an additional $750,000 in funding.

The key to the JTEC is the second law of thermodynamics. Simply put, the law says that temperature differences tend to even out—for instance, when a hot mug of coffee disperses its heat into the cool air of a room. As the heat levels of the mug and the room come into balance, there is a transfer of energy.

Work can be extracted from that transfer. The most common way of doing this is with some form of heat engine. A steam engine, for example, converts heat into electricity by using steam to spin a turbine. Steam engines—powered predominantly by coal, but also by natural gas, nuclear materials, and other fuels—generate 90 percent of all U.S. electricity. But though they have been refined over the centuries, most are still clanking, hissing, exhaust-spewing machines that rely on moving parts, and so are relatively inefficient and prone to mechanical breakdown.

Johnson’s latest JTEC prototype, which looks like a desktop model for a next-generation moonshine still, features two fuel-cell-like stacks, or chambers, filled with hydrogen gas and connected by steel tubes with round pressure gauges. Where a steam engine uses the heat generated by burning coal to create steam pressure and move mechanical elements, the JTEC uses heat (from the sun, for instance) to expand hydrogen atoms in one stack. The expanding atoms, each made up of a proton and an electron, split apart, and the freed electrons travel through an external circuit as electric current, charging a battery or performing some other useful work. Meanwhile the positively charged protons, also known as ions, squeeze through a specially designed proton-exchange membrane (one of the JTECelements borrowed from fuel cells) and combine with the electrons on the other side, reconstituting the hydrogen, which is compressed and pumped back into the hot stack. As long as heat is supplied, the cycle continues indefinitely.

“Lonnie’s using temperature differences to create pressure gradients,” says Paul Werbos, an energy expert and program director of the National Science Foundation. “Only instead of using those pressure gradients to move an axle or a wheel, he’s forcing ions through a membrane.” Werbos, who spent months vetting the JTEC and eventually awarded Johnson’s team a $75,000 research grant in 2006, describes the JTEC as “a fundamentally new way, a fundamentally well-grounded way, to convert heat to electricity.” Regarding its potential to revolutionize energy production on a global scale, he says, “It has a darn good chance of being the best thing on Earth.”

JOHNSON IS A MEMBER of what seems to be a vanishing breed: the self-invented inventor. Born the third of six children in Mobile, Alabama, in 1949, he came into the world a black male in the Deep South during the days of lawful segregation. His father, David, who died in 1984, was a World War II veteran and a civilian driver for nearby Air Force bases. According to his mother, Arline, who is 86 and still lives in Mobile (in a house remodeled with Super Soaker profits), the family was poor but happy. All eight lived in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house near Mobile Bay, in a neighborhood then being bisected by the construction of Interstate 10.

As a boy, Johnson was quiet and curious, and early on, he developed a fascination with how things worked. “Lonnie tore up his sister’s baby doll to see what made the eyes close,” his mother recalls. As he grew older, he began making things, including rockets powered by fuel cooked up in his mother’s saucepans. At 13, he bolted a discarded lawn-mower engine onto a homemade go-cart and took it atop the I-10 construction site—only to have a bemused policeman escort him back down. It was around then that Johnson learned that “engineers were the people who did the kind of things that I wanted to do.”

It was hardly an obvious career path: then, as now, the profession was dominated by whites. (As recently as 2004, only 1.6 percent of the engineering doctorates awarded in the United States went to blacks.) In high school, a standardized test from the Junior Engineering Technical Society informed Johnson that he had little aptitude for engineering; but he persevered and, as a senior, became the first student from his all-black high school ever to enter the society’s regional engineering fair. The fair was held at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, just five years after then-Governor George Wallace had tried, in 1963, to physically block two black students from enrolling there. Johnson’s entry in the competition was a creation he called Linex: a compressed-air-powered robot assembled from electromagnetic switches he’d salvaged from an old jukebox, and solenoid valves he’d fashioned out of copper tubing and rubber stoppers. The finished product wowed the judges, who awarded him first prize: $250 and a plaque. Unsurprisingly, university officials didn’t trumpet the news that a black boy had won top honors. “The only thing anybody from the university said to us during the entire competition,” Johnson remembers, “was ‘Goodbye, and y’all drive safe, now.’”

Johnson went on to win math and Air Force ROTC scholarships to Tuskegee University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s in nuclear engineering. He joined the Air Force in 1975 and subsequently held jobs at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Strategic Air Command—solid, respectable positions that made him a part of the scientific establishment. But at each stop, he felt that his creativity was stifled, and in 1987, at the age of 38, he could take it no longer. He would go into business for himself, he decided, focusing on his own projects, which included a thermodynamic heat pump, a centrifugal-force engine, and a pressure-action water gun. “All I needed was one to hit,” he says, “and I’d be fine.”

The idea for the water gun had come to him one weekend afternoon in 1982, while he was tinkering with an idea for an environmentally friendly heat pump that would use water instead of Freon. He’d built a prototype pump, attached some rubber tubing, and brought it into a bathroom. Aiming the nozzle at the tub, he turned it on, and produced a blast of water so powerful that the mere wind from the spray ruffled the curtains. This, he thought, would make a great water gun. It took Johnson seven uncertain and stressful years, but he acquired the patents and eventually found a company interested in manufacturing his Super Soaker: the Larami Corporation, which licensed the rights to the gun in a deal that would ultimately make Johnson rich.

Hoping to offer society something more significant than enhanced squirt-gun firepower, Johnson began plowing his Super Soaker profits into energy-related R&D. While continuing to work on mechanical devices such as his heat pump, he also studied battery technology. When what he taught himself about electrochemistry collided with his longtime obsession with the second law of thermodynamics, Johnson had his eureka moment: why not use temperature differences rather than a chemical reaction to force the flow of ions through a cell? The JTEC concept was born.

Today, Johnson and his family live in Atlanta’s upscale Ansley Park neighborhood. The business he launched more than two decades ago, Johnson Research and Development Company, now employs two dozen people, including designers, marketers, and research scientists. Once again, however, Johnson faces financial worries. “There was a time in my life,” he says, “when I was independently wealthy.” But that time has passed: Super Soaker profits have eroded thanks to a host of knockoffs, and now bring in only about a third of his company’s operating budget. For the rest, he relies on grants and commissions—and in the aftermath of the dot-com bust and the recent economic crisis, they’ve been drying up. He’s begun borrowing money to keep his research going—and he’s betting much of it, millions of dollars in all, on the JTEC.

IN THE WINTER of 2008, Johnson received a promising call from Karl Littau, a materials scientist with the Palo Alto Research Center (known as PARC), a subsidiary of Xerox. PARC, which gave the world the laser printer, Ethernet, and many other groundbreaking technologies, had expanded into alternative-energy research, and this had led Littau to the JTEC. Like Paul Werbos, Littau initially feared that the device sounded too good to be true, but he and several other PARC scientists set up elaborate three-dimensional computer models to analyze fluidics and heat-flow behavior in the JTECunder various conditions, and they came away from those experiments, he says, “really impressed.” Littau, like Werbos, is now a convert. The JTEC, he says, is “a very clever way to extract energy from a heat engine … It’s incredibly elegant.”

When I spoke to Littau, he ticked off the potential advantages of the JTEC over typical heat engines: no moving parts, which means the engine is more reliable and virtually silent; the safety of hydrogen, which is essentially benign (unlike, say, Freon); and the lack of waste produced (the JTEC gives off no carbon or—unlike a fuel cell—even water, which, although environmentally harmless, can corrode equipment). All of these advantages mean longer-lasting performance and potentially higher energy-conversion efficiencies.

Commercial photovoltaic solar cells convert approximately 20 percent of received solar energy into electricity. The best solar-energy systems today—thermal-power plants that concentrate the sun’s heat to drive turbines—operate at a rate of about 30 percent efficiency. The JTEC, Johnson claims, could double that figure, cutting the cost of producing solar power in half from its current average of 25 cents per kilowatt-hour, and making it competitive with coal.

“There’s a lot of debate in Washington about carbon emissions and energy,” Paul Werbos says—“about coal, nuclear power, and oil, what I call the three horsemen of the apocalypse. If we can cut the cost of solar energy in half, it becomes possible to escape from the three horsemen. The importance of this is just unbelievable.”

But having wowed PARC, Johnson is now wrestling once again with the difficulties of working within the confines of the scientific establishment. PARC wants to publish a paper about the JTEC in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, both to provide legitimacy and to encourage members of the scientific community to advance the technologies involved. But Johnson is unconvinced. “Peer review is fine,” he says, “as long as you’re making incremental improvements to a technology.” But Johnson dreams of advancing by leaps and bounds.

Adding to Johnson’s worries is tension with PARC over intellectual-property rights. Only recently did Johnson, with much reluctance, give PARC permission to file for patent protection for the problems solved in its lab. After more than two decades as his own boss, Johnson isn’t sure how much ownership interest—and potential profit—he is willing to give up. “All of a sudden, I have other people inventing stuff that I don’t have control over anymore,” Johnson says. “They could put patents in place for things I would need to implement in my engine. I’d have to pay them for my own idea!”

LAST YEAR, I VISITED the four-acre commercial property that Johnson owns on the south side of downtown Atlanta. Wearing pleated khakis and a long-sleeved polo shirt with a turtleneck underneath, Johnson took me on a tour of a meticulously refurbished three-story brick loft space featuring soaring ceilings and antique wood floors. Johnson intends to transform the building into a high-tech manufacturing center that will train and employ workers from the area; however, because of research delays and the recent economic downturn, those plans are on hold.

Until he can scale up, Johnson is instead leasing his beautiful loft space to a city agency, while he and his employees—including a handful of scientists with doctorates in chemistry, materials science, and engineering—hunker down in a low-slung, windowless warehouse across the parking lot. It’s a no-frills space, with galvanized electrical conduit descending from the ceiling through gaps where acoustic tiles are missing. On one wall of his office is a promotional poster created by the retail chain Target that features Johnson’s face amid a pantheon of 19th- and 20th-century African American inventors. Along another wall is a row of plaques commemorating a dozen of Johnson’s 100-odd patents, including those for his water-pressure heat pump, his ceramic battery, hair rollers that dry and set without heat, a diaper that plays a musical nursery-rhyme alarm when the baby is wet, and the electrochemical conversion system at the heart of the JTEC. And hanging crooked above his desk is a cheap black frame that contains an inspirational quote that has been attributed to Calvin Coolidge. Under the headingPRESS ON, it reads:

 Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

After we toured the office cubicles, Johnson swiped a card to unlock a door, and we entered a cavernous laboratory abuzz with fluorescent fixtures and thrumming with high-tech equipment. We stepped across a sticky mat, meant to grab dust from our shoes, and followed a yellow-paint path across the warehouse floor, past shelves of chemicals, airtight glove boxes, and banks of machines bristling with wires, charging and discharging batteries. Technicians in long blue lab coats and protective goggles milled about. Some of the equipment stations were housed beneath plastic clean-room tents topped with large fans and aluminum ductwork that snaked off toward the ceiling. The lab looked like a disheveled, family-garage version of a computer-microchip factory, and the resemblance wasn’t coincidental: to develop his proton-exchange membrane and ceramic batteries, Johnson has borrowed processes developed by the semiconductor industry for depositing materials, often atom by atom, onto various substrates. Beaming as he showed me his latest acquisition—a pricey-looking X-ray photoelectron spectrometer that lets him analyze a material’s atomic makeup—Johnson was clearly in his element.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/shooting-for-the-sun/8268/