Frisbee

You can see them in every park and on every beach. For over fifty years, no picnic has been successful without this piece of round plastic, which from a distance looks like an alien spaceship. After all, who could resist the joy offered by this ultimate invention of our civilization – Frisbee?

The story of the flying disc began in the late nineteenth century. The Frisbie Pie Company, established in 1871, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, served a number of baked delicacies, ranging from chocolate cookies to birthday cakes. But it was the company's pies that kept the enterprise going, especially when they became popular at nearby colleges. Crafty students quickly discovered that empty pie tins could easily be tossed and caught, and the sport was born.

The first official tossing was recorded around the year 1930. Although Yale alumni claimed they had been the inventors of what would be later known as Frisbee, this honor unquestionably belongs to the students of Middlebury College. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the history of the Frisbie family stretches even further into the past, to 1226, when English records mentioned a place in Leicestershire called Frisby on the Wreak.

Many years passed until the name Frisbee was officially introduced. Earlier attempts, varying from Whirlo-Way (1946) to Pipco Flyin-Saucer (1948) to Pluto Platter (1955), proved less successful than previously expected and Walter Morrison, who had patented the flying disc, sold the rights to Wham-O, the same company that stood behind the Hula Hoop craze. Wham-O refreshed the design of the disc and found a more catching name for it – Frisbee. (The original spelling was changed to avoid legal problems).

The Frisbee became an immediate success. “Last year they [Wham-O] hit their first jackpot with a lightweight plastic platter, the 'frisbee,'” wrote Time Magazine in 1958. The New York Times went as far as to proclaim that “Frisbee started on its way to become one of America's rare native sports.” In the 1960s, the disc – like ping-pong years later – helped warm up the East-West relations. A Time journalist reported in 1969 that during a conference of scientists from the two blocks, “an American scholar and a leading Soviet physicist were skimming a Frisbee at each other.”

The love for Frisbees is unconditional. On his dead bed, Ed Headrick, who gave the disc its present form, had only one wish: that his ashes be molded into an exclusive series of Frisbees. His family granted his request.