I was reading up on the Lingo programming language[1] and found out that it was invented by a Jamaican computer scientist named John H. Thompson [2], which led me to learn about Lonnie Johnson.
> "After I had settled into my new job and home, I set to work making the parts of the plastic water gun on a little lathe and milling machine in the basement."
It would be super interesting to find out which lathe and milling machines he had used. It sounds like they might have been Sherline machines. [4] I wonder how easy it would be today to 3D print a SuperSoaker prototype given the difficulties due to overhangs in the geometry of SuperSoaker parts (e.g. tube, barrel). Something tells me that manually fabricating it on a small lathe/mill like Lonnie Johnson did would be much faster for prototyping than 3D printing, even today ... but I could be wrong.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(programming_language) [2] http://www.black-inventor.com/John-Thompson.asp [3] http://www.black-inventor.com/Lonnie-G-Johnson.asp [4] http://sherline.com/