Origin Of Popular Products: How The Frisbee Came To Be

We have a section of our site is called “Origins Of Top Businesses”.

It features interesting facts about the early years of well-known businesses.

We’ve added a small variation to that section.

It’s called “Origins Of Popular Products“.

Today, I will show you how the Frisbee came to be.

In the late 1870′s a baker named William Russel Frisbie, of Warren, Connecticut, and later of Bridgeport, put the family name on the bottom of the light tin pans in which the homemade pies were sold.
The Bridgeport Frisbie Pie Co. grew and soon sold throughout much of Connecticut, including New Haven.
It was in New Haven where a group of Yale students are said to have begun using the tin pans for recreation. (This is where the modern history of the frisbee begins.)
Meanwhile, in California, a UFO enthusiast named Walter Frederick Morrison designed what he called a “flying saucer” to play throw and catch with.
It was later produced by the “Wham-O” company.
The president of Wham-O then encountered this pie-tin-tossing craze at Yale while he was on a promotional tour of college campuses
That gave him the idea to rename the “flying saucer” and call it a “Frisbee.”
He dropped the letter “i” from the name to avoid any legal issues.
From there frisbees grew in popularity throughout the 1970’s, which gave it a permanent spot for in American culture.

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