Dr. Lonnie Johnson is a literal rocket scientist who also happens to be the mastermind behind the legendary Super Soaker water gun. He’s also racked up over 250 patents and landed a spot in the National Toy Hall of Fame. Inventor, aerospace engineer, and entrepreneur, Dr. Johnson joins this week’s episode of Before IT Happened to talk about growing up during the civil rights movement, helping build stealth bombers and rockets for NASA, and making the the idea for the Super Soaker a reality.

Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life. 

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(03:10) - Growing up in Alabama during the civil rights movement - “I was obviously very in tune to what was going on in the environment because during that time segregation was legal and discrimination was legal, and so there were certain things that I knew I couldn't do.”

(08:17) - Developing a passion for mechanical and nuclear engineering - “The Junior Engineer Technical Society sponsored a competition at the University of Alabama. Linox won 1st place in 1968 and we were the only black kids represented. That was a huge, huge moral victory for me personally.”

(16:29) - Working on the Stealth Bomber and NASA's Galileo mission - “It was just fascinating as hell. Going to the cockpit, it reminded me of being on the USS Enterprise Star Trek.”

(22:36) - The error that changed everything - “I was working on a heat pump that would use water instead of freon. So I made some nozzles and I had these small nozzles hooked up to the bathroom sink, and I shot this stream of water across the bathroom, and I thought, ‘Geez, a high-performance water gun would be a lot of fun.’”

(26:16) -   Becoming the ‘King of Toy Guns’ - “Nerf dart guns were already on the market, but I started designing guns that were much better than what Hasbro had.” 

(32:42) - Inspiring the next generation of inventors - “Get involved in technology and engineering and enjoy it before it becomes something that you're afraid of.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Learn more about Dr. Lonnie Johnson and follow him on Twitter

Watch CBS Sunday Morning’s Mo Rocca interview Dr. Lonnie Johnson

Watch Dr. Lonnie Johnson’s TEDx Talk: Revolutionary designs for energy alternatives

Read Popular Mechanics: Super Soaker Inventor Aims to Cut Solar Costs in Half

Learn more about the all-solid-state batteries Dr. Johnson is developing at Johnson Energy Storage

Learn more about the Thermo-Electrochemical Converter that Dr. Johnson is developing at JTEC Energy

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Millions of people have been affected by data breaches and leaks in recent years. But what if there was a better way to keep our digital identities secure? In this week's episode of Before IT Happened, Locke Brown talks about how his company NuID is working to both simplify and strengthen online security by rethinking the traditional password-based approach to authentication in favor of a decentralized, user-controlled solution. 

Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, or a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life. 

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(03:40) - Growing up in the 90s and early 2000s - “We had a family computer in the kitchen and the internet was kind of the wild west. People couldn't imagine putting credit card information online, and now we literally go online and ask a stranger to come to pick us up and get in their car.”

(07:55) - Getting started in Silicon Valley - “I actually went straight to Silicon Valley from Mongolia to start my internship at Google.”

(14:18) - Meeting his NuID cofounder - “Lord knows what conversations we got into, but you know, all sorts of tech. And he was in the distributed systems and the guy's mind, you know, was so sharp and we just hit it off on all sorts of fun little tangential thoughts and things.”

(19:32) - How easily passwords and login info can be compromised - “Some admin that has a responsibility and is in control of securing some database of user login data, they get compromised somewhere along the line, whether that's social hacking or maybe they use the same password that they use on their, say, LinkedIn account, right?” 

(27:42) - How NuID is using blockchain technology - “We're going to eliminate the need for you to ever see, store and therefore be liable in having to secure any user login data. That database of login information that we've talked about, that's gone. There's none of that. You never actually have to touch this stuff.”

(35:49) -  The future of cybersecurity and what’s next for NuID and Locke - “NuID could disappear and our protocol and the credentials that are registered through it for users would persist because they are stored outside of us.”

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Connect with Locke Brown on LinkedIn 

Follow NuID on Twitter

Learn more about NuID and their utility token

Read NuID’s White Paper

Thank you for listening! Follow Before IT Happened on Instagram and Twitter, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

Before IT Happened is produced by Donna Loughlin and

Vlad Panchenko, a lifelong gamer and technologist, is on course to one day build a massive metaverse community and exchange by connecting video gamers on mega gaming platforms. Vlad started his career in Ukraine at the age of 16, where he was paid by the kilobyte to translate pirated video games from English into Russian and Ukrainian. Byte by byte, Panchenko gained the experience that would lead him to create powerful gaming platforms. In this episode, Vlad talks about his latest creation, DMarket, a giant social gaming marketplace where all manner of virtual goods are traded. Join us as we take a step into the brave new world of the future where virtual worlds are a reality.

Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life. 

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(02:44) - Translating pirated video games after school in Ukraine - “They needed somebody to translate from English to Ukrainian and Russian and that was me, and that was my first job.”

(07:35) - How Vlad’s entrepreneurial journey began - “I knew from the very beginning that I'm pretty much ambitious and that I'm going to build, one-by-one, bigger and bigger companies.”

(16:35) - Gamers and unlocking the real metaverse - “I am a hundred percent sure that the people and the community who will actually unlock the real metaverse will be the video game developers.” 

(23:17) - DMarket and the technology behind it - “The marketplace that we provide, it's the best in the world. It's like the blood of all the Web 3.0 and Metaverse, but still, it couldn't fly without the creativity. So the game and the creative part comes first.”

(28:53) - Vlad’s advice to future game developers - “Keep in mind this is the technology. First comes the story, then the narrative and then the actual entertainment.”

(34:22) - What we can learn from the gaming community and how the invasion of Ukraine affected him - “On February 24th, I was at a conference in Las Vegas, and I couldn't believe that it happened. Because in my humble opinion, this is such a stupid thing to do in 2022. You build Web 3.0, you build AI, you build like ‘The Calling of Mars’, you can do so many things, and you still come back to doing something people have been doing hundred years ago. Why? It makes no sense for me.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Vlad Panchenko on LinkedIn and Instagram

Learn more about DMarket

Watch CNN’s Tech CEO raises millions in crypto and evacuates employees from Ukraine

Read USA Today’s: 'Hits on many facets of our activities': How the tech industry is impacted by the war in Ukraine

Read Axios’s: Tech CEO flies workers out of Ukraine as fear of invasion looms

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