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Real name Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, and he probably didn't ask for the nickname, but it was so fitting that people of all classes and from all walks of life – wizards, nobles, ordinary city people – all through history called and still do call him "Bloody Stupid" Johnson.

Johnson is a historical figure, which is a blessing because the damage would be considerable if he were still active. Supposedly, Johnson claimed that a truly good inventor ought to be able to invent anything. That, using a modern interpretation, may suggest that a truly infinite multiverse ought to contain all kinds of good things, bad things, and plain weird things. A more fair and analytical statement posited that Johnson's inventions might very well be ingenious, but would never turn out to do what they were supposed to do. If something he designed worked well, it was purely by accident. Somebody requiring a surface-to-air missile probably should ask Johnson to design a small fountain.

In addition to inventing machines of all sorts, Johnson also did architectural designs. Some of the things went wrong because of drawing the plan the wrong way around, being careless with unit measures (feet vs. inches) and numbers (1,000 vs. 0.001), and so on, but other strange effects must have taken considerable skills. The only thing(s) he developed that worked well, in the way that they were supposed to, without ever breaking down, were the organs (musical instruments), three of which are still in existence and in good working condition. Each of these great organs is a huge contraption with an amazing, possibly frightening, range of sound effects.

He became so notorious, that it became fashionable for rich people to have been "Johnsoned" (see The Discworld Companion). Although Sybil Ramkin proudly states that her family's homes and land escaped this fate, as her grandfather saw Johnson walking up the drive one day with a hopeful salesman's smile on his face, at which Ramkin grand-père promptly shot him in the leg as a warning.

The date of his death is not available. He worked for Lord Snapcase but not after his term, so it was in the range of thirty years ago. His invention of the Sorting Engine at the Post Office is within living memory of Tolliver Groat. Sybil Ramkin's grandfather shot him in the leg. This could have taken place far earlier while her grandparent was still young and vigorous enough to draw a bow.

All in all, his works include:

Architecture large enough to be kept in a small cardboard box in a skinny old man's pocket

• Colossus of Morpork.
• Commemorative arch for Battle of Crumhorn.
• Hanging Gardens of Ankh.

Other notable building works

• Quirm Memorial.
• Collapsed Tower of Quirm, for which Johnson specified quicksand as a building material because they wanted it up fast.
• Ornamental cruet set for Lord Snapcase, Ankh-Morpork. The salt and pepper shakers are large enough to house four families and store grain.
• Empirical Crescent, Ankh-Morpork. It looks like a normal set of houses, but the dimensions inside it are twisted, as well as of the gardens. Everybody throws out their junk, because it probably doesn't land in your own garden. Someone might live at number 1, but his bedroom could be at number 3 and his kitchen in number 5. The painter Methodia Rascal lived in this street.

Devices

• Great organ, Don'tgonearthe Castle, Überwald. Includes sound effects of thunder, young ladies screaming, wolf howls, floor creaks, and more. Operates on water power of an underground river.
• Organ, the Opera House, Ankh-Morpork.
• Great organ, the Unseen University, Ankh-Morpork. Has three keyboards and a hundred knobs. Includes farmyard noises. Requires 8 students to pump up the air reservoir.
• "Archchancellor Weatherwax's Bathroom", or, Patent 'Typhoon' Superior Indoor Ablutorium with Automatic Soap Dish, Unseen University, Ankh-Morpork. Pipes are connected to the Unseen Great Organ (see above). Archchancellor Galder Weatherwax commissioned it, used it, and boarded it up. Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully re-opened it, tried it, loved it, met with an accident, fortunately not fatal, and boarded it up.
• Mail-sorting engine, the Post Office, Ankh-Morpork. Originally designed as yet another organ (musical instrument). Acquired by Postmaster General Cowerby. In the centre of this machine is one wheel that Johnson, for the sake of tidiness, had designed to have a pi (circumference to diameter ratio) of exactly 3, not 3.14-mumble-mumble-and-a-bit. In order for pi to be exactly 3, the universe has been changed. The machine therefore taps through many layers of the space-time continuum. Mail came out of the sorting machine that wasn't put into it by the human hands of the postal workers. Mail from next week, mail from 50 years in the future, mail that could have been, mail from alternative universes, mail that people swore they posted but really hadn't, mountains of such mail. Finally, Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow beat up the machine so that it stopped whirring. No longer sorting any mail, the machine still sports an annoying blue glow, and has the power to split objects placed right above its centre. This makes one of the rooms in the cellars, originally the mail-sorting room, a dangerous place to be.
• The Custard-Pie Machine:- designed for trhe Guild of Fools in order to put visitors in the appropriately mirthful frame of mind. Alas, Johnson under-estimated the effects of even quite thin runny custard when propelled at 300mph, and the device is now relegated to the museum of the Guild.
• The Great Daisy: formerly the water-cannon, built in the shape of a giant daisy, that was to have been used to welcome visitors to the Fools' Guild. It is no longer in use and has been relegated to the Guild Museum following the unfortunate drowning incident.

Landscaping

• Artificial hillock, right in front of Quirm Manor. Made of 2,000 tons of earth, because "it would drive me nuts to have to look at a bunch of trees and a lake all day, how about you?".
• The Gardens, Patrician's Palace, Ankh-Morpork, with the following features:
  • Beehive. So large that it could accommodate bees 10 feet long. Currently serving as dovecot. There is a suggestion that it has in the past been used to accommodate homing albatrosses, the messenger birds between Ankh-Morpork and the Agatean Empire.
  • Chiming sundial. Usually explodes around noon. May also fall over.
  • Crazy paving. Has committed suicide.
  • Fountain. Currently defunct. Fired a small stone cherub 1,000 feet into the air 5 minutes after it was first switched on.
  • Garden furniture. Made of cast iron. Known to have melted on three occasions.
  • The Hoho. A cunningly designed ditch like a Haha, only the Hoho is 50 feet deep. Has claimed three Palace gardeners. Also once trapped Dr. Cruces, then head of the Assassins' Guild.
  • Maze. Too small. People get lost looking for it.
  • Ornamental trout lake. 150 yards long, 1 inch wide. Home to one trout, living comfortably provided that it doesn't try to turn around.

Annotation

In the spoof rockumentary movie This is Spinal Tap, mention must be made of the B.S. Johnson moment when the band's manager totally fails to communicate with the stage-prop designer. In a truly Discworld moment, the conventional symbols for inches (") and feet (') are confused, and a Stonehenge-sized trilithon meant to be 18' x 12' - isn't. It is, however, 18" x 12". This adds a new poignancy to the lyric See the little people dance, as the expensively-hired dwarf dancers proceed to hide the mighty trilithon with their bodies and eventually kick it a little way across the stage...

In the real (Round)world, the government of the Republic of Ireland recently announced, proudly, that it had completed the changeover from the ambivalently-named Imperial system (a leftover of having been, largely unwillingly, part of the British Imperial system) to the European-standard Metric system of weights and measures. As one of Ireland's principal exports to the rest of the world is building contractors and labourers, it was immediately pointed out that most builders will still ask for - and be able to buy - a hundred metres of four-by-two, or a gross of 7mm diameter screws, or a box of 3/4 inch nails with 5mm heads. Clearly Irish metrification, with its gloriously Discworld gloss, needs more work.

Of his inventions:

• Colossus of Morpork = Colossus of Rhodes (a Wonder of the Ancient World)
• Hanging Gardens of Ankh = Hanging Gardens of Babylon (another Ancient Wonder) [technically in Semiramis, but hey...]
• Collapsed Tower of Quirm = Leaning Tower of Pisa
• Organs: extra sound effects mirror the strange, unrealistic sounds found on some electric keyboards.