Outlook Mixtape: Eureka! part 1

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The dreamers, tinkerers and maverick inventors whose ideas travelled far beyond their expectations. American engineer Lonnie Johnson helped to develop the stealth bomber and Nasa's Galileo space mission to Jupiter. But the invention he is best known for is the Super Soaker water gun. It's one of the best-selling toys of all time, and made millions of dollars for Lonnie. The song Under Mi Sleng Teng was a massive Jamaican dancehall hit in the 80s, and the electronic sample it used was borrowed by lots of other artists too. Its sound changed the direction of Jamaican music, but the sample itself had been created in Japan five years before. The woman behind it was pianist Okuda Hiroko, a reggae fan employed by Casio to make pre-set tunes for their new range of keyboards. She had no idea how famous her work would become. Swedish-American Simone Giertz describes herself as "the queen of bad robots, mistress of malfunctions and the mother of terrible inventions". They include: an alarm clock that slaps you awake, a machine for applying lipstick, and a contraption for shampooing your hair. When brothers Abdoulaye and Ibrahima Barry were growing up in the 1980s in Guinea, the Fulani language - which is spoken by millions of people across the world – didn't have its own alphabet, instead having to borrow letters from Arabic to be written down. With the support of their father, the brothers – aged just 10 and 14 – set about creating a formalised alphabet for Fulani. Heine Allemagne is the inventor of the magic vanishing spray that the referees were using to mark out white lines on the pitch for free kicks in the World Cup. The story of how he came up with the idea is as intriguing as any football match. Presenter: India Rakusen Producer: Hannah Dean