Meet-the-Author Recording with Chris Barton

Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions |

Chris Barton introduces and shares some of the backstory for creating Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions.

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Chris Barton: Hi there. This is Chris Barton, and I'm the author of Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions. I'm going to tell you a bit about how I came to write this book, and then I'll share an excerpt with you. Whoosh began one day when I was having lunch with a couple of librarians whose schools I was visiting, and they were telling me about a class they had gone to where all the librarians and other educators that were taking this class were asked to draw a picture of a scientist. And the most common picture that resulted was of someone who cartoonishly resembled Albert Einstein. You know, wild hair, lab coat, white man.

And that was the point of the exercise was to get these educators more aware of the fact that scientists are much more diverse than just white men. The lesson that those librarians took that rubbed off on me in a big way, and I went to my hotel that evening and began researching African American scientists, African American inventors. And very quickly I came across the story of Lonnie Johnson. I knew I wanted to tell his story.

Now, unlike most of the people I've written about in my other books, Lonnie Johnson is still alive. He's still very busy as an inventor. So I was able to interview him, unlike most of the people that I write about, but I had to wait until he wasn't quite so busy. But the wait was worth it. It took a few months, but when I was able to talk with him on the telephone, Lonnie Johnson was very generous with his time, and I've never enjoyed an interview more than I did while I was talking with Lonnie Johnson.

But there was lots more research for me to do than just speaking with him. Everything from interviewing Lonnie's former boss at NASA to researching the details of how and when schools in Lonnie's home state of Alabama were desegregated. Now, I'd like to read an excerpt to you from Whoosh.

"Inspired by a TV show, Lonnie had built his own robot. He made it out of scrap metal and named in Linux. Compressed air cylinders and bowls allowed Linux's body to turn and its arms to move. The switches came from an old broken jukebox. Lonnie used a tape recorder to program Linux, and as a bonus the reels looked like eyes. Lonnie wanted to enter his creation in a science fair, but he couldn't get the transmitter to work. Without it, Lonnie couldn't send commands to Linux.

Science fairs came and went. Lonnie missed one and then another until he got an idea. Now, Lonnie may or may not have asked before he borrowed his little sister's walkie-talkie, but it fixed the transmission issue. His school's team took freshly finished Linux to a 1968 science fair at the University of Alabama, where only five years earlier African American students hadn't even been allowed. Having to compete in a place that still wasn't very welcoming, now that was a challenge with a capital C. Against other schools from all over the state, Lonnie's team won first place."

This Meet-the-Author Recording with Chris Barton was exclusively created in July 2017 by TeachingBooks with thanks to Charlesbridge.