Frisbee ‘inventor’ dead at 90

The father of the Frisbee, Fred Morrison, died last February 9 at the respectable age of 90 years.

The story goes that he got the inspiration for this flying-saucer toy in 1937 at a Thanksgiving feast in Southern California. He and his girlfriend, Lucile “Lu” Nay, entertained themselves by tossing a popcorn-tin lid in the backyard. The lid eventually became dented, ruining its aerodynamic potential, and the resourceful couple snatched a cake pan from Mr. Morrison’s mother’s kitchen.
Cake pans, it turned out, were sturdier and flew better – so much so that one day, when the two were flinging a pan back and forth on the beach, an impressed passerby offered to buy it. The pan had originally cost a nickel, the stranger offered a quarter – and that exchange was enough to whet Mr. Morrison’s entrepreneurial appetite.
“That got the wheels turning,” he told a Norfolk, Va., reporter in 2007. “There was a business.”

Quite some business indeed; who hasn’t thrown a frisbee once at a picnic or on the beach?