Lonnie Johnson (pictured below) is an American inventor in the Edison mold with approximately 100 patents to his name. He's the man who invented the Super Soaker squirt gun, and now he's come up with the
Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter, or J
TEC (pronounced “
jay-tek”) which may be able to turn solar heat into electricity, with twice the efficiency of a photovoltaic cell, by using temperature difference generated pressure gradients to force ions through a membrane.
This is the sort of technology that the United States needs to invest in BIG TIME. We can do so by cutting the excessive bloat out of the defense budget, but we have to develop the political will to do so. (Have you noticed how the current deficit reduction discussions so deftly avoid military cuts?)
To read more about Lonnie Johnson and the JTEC, click on the following link, which will take you to Logan Ward's November 2010 article in
The Atlantic.
Shooting for the Sun
From his childhood in segregated Mobile, Alabama, to his run-ins with a nay-saying scientific establishment, the engineer Lonnie Johnson has never paid much heed to those who told him what he could and couldn’t accomplish. Best known for creating the state-of-the-art Super Soaker squirt gun, Johnson believes he now holds the key to affordable solar power.
IMAGE CREDIT: BEN BAKER/REDUX
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