“Lonnie tore up his sister’s baby doll to see what made the eyes close,” his mother recalled. Once, in an effort to create rocket fuel in one of his mother’s saucepans, Johnson almost burned his house down when it exploded on the stove.
His affinity for engineering made his peers refer to him as “The Professor.” One of the young “Professor’s” first creations was a small engine made of scrap metal that was affixed to a go-kart. All the crude racecar needed to run on its own were a few pushes with a running start and string-operated steering wheel. ...
After a full year of work on a personal robot, Johnson entered his invention into the Junior Engineering Technical Society Fair at the University of Alabama in 1968. While a notable accomplishment in and of itself, Johnson’s entry took on an even more significant role as it was the only entry from an entirely black high school. ...
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