—Continued from Front Page—    The popularity of the game (christened “Frisbie-ing” by its participants) spread, and it has long been believed that the origins of the disc came from Frisbie’s pie tins.
       In a book released last year, however, Frisbee inventor Fred Morrison reveals that inspiration for the first modern flying disc did not come from Frisbie pie tins thrown by Yale students in the 1920s, but from a popcorn can lid he tossed around at a Thanksgiving gathering in Los Angeles in 1937. After serving in World War II (and being detained in the infamous luxury of Stalag 13), Morrison returned and started Partners in Plastic (Pipco) with fellow WWII vet Warren Franscioni. Together, they worked out a design for a lightweight, inexpensive disc and named it the Flyin’ Saucer to cash in on UFO mania (in July of 1947, the US military purportedly recovered the wreckage of an alien craft near Roswell).
       Morrison and Franscioni faced some financial difficulties after being sued by Al Capp, who had agreed to feature the disc in his comic strip Li’l Abner. The $5,000 settlement broke up Pipco, and the two founders drifted apart. Morrison was undeterred, however, and drew up plans for a new disc, the Pluto Platter. While demonstrating the Platter in an LA parking lot in 1955, Morrison was approached by Rich Knerr and Spud Melin, founders of the Wham-O toy company. A contract was signed, and Knerr and Melin began selling the Pluto Platter with an expertise Morrison and Franscioni had never possessed.
       Knerr supposedly came up with the name Frisbee while handing out Pluto Platters at east coast college campuses in the 1950s. He witnessed students engaged in the decades-old pie-throwing activities of their ancestral peers, and heard them yelling “Frisbie!” each time they threw a pie plate. Why? Because the heavy metal tin was potentially dangerous, students yelled “Frisbie!” before each toss to warn people of the tin’s trajectory, much like golfers yell “fore!” before a stroke. Knerr trademarked the name Frisbee, possibly misspelling it to avoid trademark issues with the Frisbie Pie Company. He need not have worried, however; Frisbie Pie Co. went under in 1958, a year after Wham-O started selling Frisbees.

More Frisbee Trivia

*	In 1977, twenty years and 100 million Frisbees later, Wham-O estimated that half of its sales came from the sale of flying discs.
*	Over 200 million Frisbees have been purchased since 1957, and some estimate that more Frisbees are sold each year than the combined total of all footballs, baseballs, and basketballs.
*	Ultimate Frisbee was invented by high school students in Maplewood, New Jersey in 1967.
*	Frisbee Golf was invented by Wham-O inventor Ed Headrick in the 1970s. Headrick was also responsible for giving us the truly modern Frisbee when, in December of 1967, he patented a series of rings around the Frisbee’s edge. These were designed to stabilize the disc during flight, and are appropriately named the “Rings of Headrick.”

Sources: Flying Disc Connection, The History Channel: This Day in History, Wikipedia, About.com; Evans, Mike. From Altoids to Zima (2004); Morrison, Fred. Flat Flip Flies Straight (2006).