Atlanta has always been a city of hustle, but long before tech bros and film studios, some of our sharpest minds were quietly building the future in garages, basements, and laboratories right here in the Peach State.
Here are six Atlanta-area inventors whose creations still touch your life—whether you’re sipping a Coke downtown or streaming music on your phone.
1. Dr. John S. Pemberton – Coca-Cola
Most people know the story: a pharmacist from Columbus who moved to Atlanta after being wounded in the Civil War. In 1886, while searching for a headache remedy, Pemberton (1831–1888) mixed coca leaves, kola nuts, sugar, and a secret blend of oils in a three-legged brass kettle in his Jacobs’ Pharmacy lab on Peachtree Street.
The result? Coca-Cola, originally sold as a “brain tonic” for 5¢ a glass.
By the time of his death two years later, the drink was already Atlanta’s most famous export. Today the World of Coca-Cola downtown still honors the man who accidentally invented the world’s most recognized brand.
2. Asa Griggs Candler – The Modern Coca-Cola Company
Yes, Pemberton created the syrup, but Atlanta druggist and marketing genius Asa Candler (1851–1929) bought the rights in 1888 for about $2,300 and turned a local tonic into an international empire.
Candler pioneered bottled soda, nationwide franchising, and some of the earliest mass-media advertising.
By 1916 he was Atlanta’s first self-made millionaire and would later become mayor. Without Candler’s business innovations, there’s no red truck, no Santa ads, and probably no Olympic sponsorship in 1996.
3. Dr. Crawford W. Long – Surgical Anesthesia (the very first use of ether)
Though he practiced in Jefferson, Georgia (about 60 miles northeast of Atlanta), Crawford Long (1815–1878) was an Atlanta-trained physician (University of Georgia and later in Atlanta hospitals) who, on March 30, 1842, removed a tumor from a patient’s neck while the patient was under diethyl ether anesthesia—the first documented case of painless surgery.
Long didn’t publish his findings quickly enough to win the public credit battle (that went to Boston’s William Morton), but historians now agree the Georgian was first.
The Crawford W. Long Museum in Jefferson and the statue of him on the State Capitol grounds remind us that modern surgery owes its start to a quiet country doctor from the Atlanta orbit.
4. Dr. Lonnie Johnson – The Super Soaker
Yes, the best-selling water gun of all time was invented right here. The inventor? Dr. Lonnie Johnson (b. 1949) of southwest Atlanta.
A nuclear engineer who worked on the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Stealth Bomber program at the Air Force’s nuclear lab in Marietta, Johnson came up with the idea for a high-pressure water gun while testing a new type of heat pump in his Cascade Heights bathroom in 1982.
A accidental high-powered squirt across the room led to seven years of tinkering in his basement workshop.
Patented in 1989 and licensed to Larami, the Super Soaker earned Johnson over $1 billion in royalties and made him one of the wealthiest African-American inventors in history.
He still lives in Atlanta and now funds STEM education through his Johnson Research & Development company in Vinings.
5. Eugene Stoner & Robert Fremont – The AR-15/AR Platform
While most people associate the AR-15 with later military use, the original ArmaLite AR-15 rifle was designed in the 1950s by Eugene Stoner (1922–1997) — who moved to Georgia in the 1980s — and a small team that included Atlanta-born engineer Robert Fremont (1919–2008).
Much of the final development and early testing of the lightweight, modular rifle happened after ArmaLite set up a research division in the Atlanta area.
Adopted by the U.S. military as the M16, the platform remains the most widely produced rifle design in history—and its civilian variants are everywhere. Love it or hate it, the black rifle that dominates modern firearms culture has deep Georgia DNA.
Final Word
From pain relief to billion-dollar beverages, from airport walkways to backyard water wars, Atlanta inventors have been quietly shaping daily life for over 180 years.
Next time you grab a Coke, dodge a Super Soaker blast, or jog across a moving walkway at the world’s busiest airport, tip your hat to the tinkerers who made it all possible—right here at home.