The Frisbee Celebrates its 50th Anniversary

January 13th, 1957 marks the first sale of the flying disc. When the baker William Russell Frisbie moved to Bridgeport Connecticut in 1871 he had no clue a fascinating piece of sports equipment should be named after him.

Two years prior, the company Wham-O had made a fitting offer to one of the two inventors of the first plastic discs, Walter Frederick Morrison. Together with Warren Francioni he had already pressed the first professional flying disc in 1948 called the “Arcuate Vane model”. The second model, the “Pluto Platter”, as offered by Wham-O, is from 1951. Products called “Sailing Satellite”, “Sputnik” and “Flying Saucer” followed, before Wham-O sold the first worldwide “Frisbees” from 1959 on.

Students of Yale University, located close to the Frisbie Pie Company, had been throwing pie-tins as early as the 1920’s, calling “Frisbie” to caution others of airborne discs. Without seeing the stamps on the bottom of the pie-tins, a marketing manager transferred the name phonetically to “Frisbee”. In 1958 Wham-O registered the trademark Frisbee™ and Fred Morrison got the patent rights alone, cashing in on over one million dollars.

The onset of selling discs marks the beginning of flying disc sports. Today more than 100,000 people in over 40 countries practice organised flying discs sports on all five continents.

The 1968 invention of the most popular team disc sport “Ultimate” was introduced by Joel Silver, today’s mega successful Hollywood producer of films like “Die “Hard“, “Lethal Weapon“, “Predator“ and “Matrix“. Tony Leonardo, together with Adam Zagoria, authors of the book “Ultimate – The First Four Decades“ (Los Altos, USA, 2005), report that Silver had turned his back to flying discs sports in the seventies, after Wham-O had refused to pay him One Dollar per disc for his contributions to driving the sales of the discs.

There are also prominent representatives of flying disc sports in Europe. The latest spectacular example happened on the space station ISS, where Christer Fuglesang, the first Swede in space, broke the world record in the discipline “Maximum Time Aloft".*

In Germany the soccer “Kaiser“ Franz Beckenbauer was president of an early Flying Disc Sports Association, after learning about disc sports while playing for the Cosmos New York soccer team.

The youth coach of former tennis star Boris Becker, Boris Breskvar, describes using Ultimate as cross training for tennis with respect to endurance and running training as well as for developing reaction time and wrist strength and mobility. (“Tennis, how Boris Becker learned it from me”, Munich 1985).

The flying disc, in most parts of the world better known as the “Frisbee”, has become part of everyday culture. Two famous disc throws of Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future” parts 2 and 3 as well as episodes of “Tom & Jerry”, and the “Simpsons”, display the mainstream nature of the flying disc. Occurrences of discs in popular culture are increasing, and awareness of disc sports is growing among the general public and sporting organizations world wide. In 2001, Ultimate and Disc Golf were included in the World Games held in Akita, Japan.

Another 50th anniversary celebration will be held this summer from June 29th, to July 2nd, in Hancock, Michigan. The International Frisbee Tournament (ITF) celebrates its 50th year.

It will certainly be interesting to witness how flying disc sports evolve over the next 50 years.

* WFDF note: Christer's fantastic MTA throw has actually initiated a new category of "Galactic" records for players who are not hampered by the limitations of gravity.

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