Fred Morrison with his Pluto Platter in 1957. Wormhole Publishers

The Frisbee’s California origin story

The Frisbee was invented in the Golden State. As a teenager in 1930s Los Angeles, Fred Morrison had tossed around cake pans for fun. Later, after serving as a pilot in World War II, he created a series of flying disc prototypes. He sold a plastic version called the Pluto Platter to Wham-O, which rolled out the first batch in 1957.

The company renamed them Frisbees after the Frisbie Pie Company in Connecticut, where college students made a game of tossing the pies’ tin lids. It became insanely popular, spawning full-fledged sports, as players fell in thrall to the truism once uttered by Albert Einstein himself: It’s simply a beautiful thing to watch a disc fly.

N.Y. Times

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