Frisbee

The frisbee is a gliding disc, typically an injection molded plastic disc about 20 to 25 centimeters across with a pronounced lip, thrown and caught for recreation and organized sport. It traces to Walter Frederick Morrison, who began tossing a popcorn can lid and then a cake pan with his future wife Lucile after Thanksgiving dinner in 1937 and found beachgoers willing to pay for the toy. After World War II he refined the design, first as the Whirlo-Way and then, after reports of UFO sightings, as the Flyin Saucer, producing plastic discs with Warren Franscioni from 1948. Morrison sold the rights to Wham-O on January 23, 1957, and the company renamed the product Frisbee that June, taking the name from the Connecticut based Frisbie Pie Company whose empty pie tins Yale students had already been tossing. The disc's shape acts as an airfoil that reduces drag and adds lift, and the spin a thrower imparts gives it a stabilizing gyroscopic effect that lets it be aimed accurately and thrown for distance.