Frisbees glide quite smoothly through the air. That is, when they’re not being used competitively!
- A ‘Frisbee’, ‘flying disc’ or ‘disc’, is an invention shaped like a disc, primarily used to entertain, but it is also used as the main piece of equipment in the ‘ultimate’ disc field sport.
- Frisbees are thrown by a flick action of the wrist, and are often thrown casually to and from people in a group.
- The typical diameter of Frisbees or flying discs ranges from 20 to 25 centimetres (8 to 10 inches), however they are available in smaller and larger sizes.
- The name ‘Frisbee’ is said to have originated from the Frisbie Pie Company’s metal pie tins that were used by university students as flying discs, and it is a trademark name owned by Wham-O, an American toy company, who bought the rights to the invention in 1957.
- The first Frisbee discs were metal food tin lids and cake pans used by American Walter Frederick Morrison and his would-be wife Lu in the 1930s, which they eventually sold to passers-by for 25 cents, making a 20 cent profit.
- Fred Morrison, as he was commonly known, developed his disc idea when he became a pilot during World War II and suffered a period of imprisonment, and he finalised and commercialised his plastic invention in 1948 with Warren Franscioni, and called it a ‘Flyin-Saucer’.
- The modern Frisbee stems from a redesign made in 1955 by Fred Morrison, which was later improved by Edward Headrick in 1964 to make the disc more accurate and stable when thrown.
- While Frisbee has been a popular brand of flying disc, Discraft is a major brand of discs in the sporting industry and are commonly used for ultimate games and competition purposes, and as of 2015, the furthest a flying disc has been thrown is 263.2 metres (863.5 feet), by Simon Lizotte of Germany, in 2014.
- The Frisbee was used in a sporting game in the late 1960s by students of Columbia High School in Maplewood, in the United States, which developed into the sport now known as ‘ultimate’.
- Frisbees and flying discs are kept airborne by creating lift through the spinning caused by a throw, combined with the shape of the disc.
Bibliography:
Flying Disc, 2015, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_disc
Of the Game, 2015, What Is Ultimate, http://www.whatisultimate.com/history/of-the-game/
Toy company Wham-O produces first Frisbees, 2015, History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/toy-company-wham-o-produces-first-frisbees
My son is absolutely in love with the game of frisbee, he’s been playing since he was a freshman. It’s fun though to read about all of these facts from the 1900’s. I’ll have to show some of these to my son and see if he knew about any of them.