FRISBEE HISTORY

The History of the Frisbee

"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a Frisbee"

The following are extracts from a case study on flying discs by Martin Lucy.

Flying disc history can be split into the areas of ancient and modern times. The modern history of discs is easy to understand but the origins of the first frisbee are dubious.

Ancient Disc History

Flying discs are known to have been around prior to 400BC when the Greeks competed in the Olympic Games which included discus throwing. The discus however relies on different flight charactoristics from Frisbees.

On the thirteenth of January 1968 archaeologists on a dig near Toejam, Utah, USA., who were investigating ancient Indian artifacts, were surprised to unearth fragments of mud dishes similar to frisbee in design. Inscriptions were found on one piece and identified as being in an almost forgotten dialect. The writing, once deciphered, read "Play catch, invent games, fly-flip away". This immediately exposed the discs as fake. Fred Morrison had put this piece of dialogue onto his Pluto Platter back in 1951.

There are reports of Roman soldiers using their shields as Frisbees. Stories tell how, at the battle of Zarma in 202BC, the Roman army confronted Hannibal and the might of Carthage with the Romans obtaining victory helped by the use of razor sharp shields hurled Frisbee fashion towards the opposition.

Another version of the origin of the Frisbee is one that was popular on the Yale University campus. In 1827 Elihu Frisbie allegedly took offence to the passing of the collection plate in chapel and upon seizing the monetary tray he flung it towards the college quad. This custom apparently caught on.

Modern Disc History

In 1871, shortly after the civil war, William Russell Frisbie moved to Bridgeport, Conneticut, from Bransford in order to manage a new bakery, a branch of the Olds Baking Company. After a short time W.R. Frisbie bought the bakery, situated on 363 Kossuth Street, and renamed in the Frisbie Pie Company. The company grew and at its peak in 1958 was producing 80,000 pies per day.

The Frisbie Pie company opened up close to the college which later became Yale (1887) and there are strong links with Yale as to the origination of the Frisbee.

There is some arguement as to the source of the first frisbee; some say it lies with the pie tins and others with the cookie tin lids. The cookie arguement is backed up by Charles O. Gregory who recalls "I clearly remember the cookies; and I also recall that the cover of the tin box was used by the older kids just the same way that frisbees are now used... When I went to college -Yale(1920)- I saw students using these same tin box lids as people now use Frisbees"

The more popular theory is that of the pie tin. Yale students frequently bought the Frisbie Pies and after eating them would toss the empty pie tin or prototype Frisbee around the Yale campus. Metal pie dishes are not the softest of missile sto be hit with and this led to throwers signalling the catcher of the approaching "Frisbee". To complicate matters there were three different sizes of pie tin with 10, 8 and 4 inch diameters, all bearing the Frisbie stamp. There were also pie tins without the stamp.

The evolution of the frisbee into a plastic disc is all down to one man, Fred Morrison, who came from an investive background. After the end of the second world war he started to develop flying discs. UFO's and flying saucers were beginning to hold people's attention and he decided to try and turn the idea into a craze.

Morrison had the idea of producing a plastic flying disc and working in conjunction with Warren Francioni (who is given little credit for his involvement) they produced the first crude attempt at a plastic disc. Morrison took his first tinite disc to the Southern Californian Plastics Company on Los Angeles in 1948, and after scraping together enough money to make a mould for the injection moulding process, and the first plastic plying discs were produced. The first disc is normally known as the Arcuate Vane model although Morrison also called it the Rotary Fingernail Clipper with the harder version being called the Pipco Crash named after Morrisons Pipco company.

In 1951 Morrison went on to produce his second model called the Pluto Platter which he sold at county fairs with some success.

In 1955 Knerr and Melin, who had founded the Wham-O company in 1948, met up with Morrison and made him a proposition. This maked the true beginning of flying disc production and on Jan 13, 1957 the first Wham-O Pluto Platters flew off the production line. However, the discs did not catch on as Wham-O had hoped and with the success of Wham-O's hoola hoops disc production virtually stopped.

In 1958 the frisbie pie factory shut down and Fred Morrison was awarded the "flying disc" patent.

On May 26, 1959, in a bid by Wham-O to dreate a catchy name for its disc products, the word Frisbee became a registered trademark. Knerr picked up the term whilst on a trip round the campuses of the Ivy League. Harvard students told him how they had been throwing pie tins around for years and calling it Frisbie-ing. The terms Fribie and Frisbie-ing appealed to Knerr and he borrowed them for use at Wham-O. Being unaware of the significance or the historical aspects of these words he miss-spelt them as Frisbee!

After the Pluto Platter, the Sailing Satellite, the Sputnik and the Flying Saucer, Wham-O produced the worlds first Frisbee.And the rest (as they say) is history....

Ian Scotland: scott@webleicester.net