Frisbee inventor dies at 90

The man responsible for one of the most iconic toys of the past century has died.

Fred Morrison initially got the idea for what would become the frisbee in 1937, when he and his then-girlfriend passed time by tossing a popcorn tin back and forth. When the tin became dented, the makeshift toy’s aerodynamics were affected and Morrison discovered that a pie tin was more suited to the task. The couple later took the pie tin tossing to the beach, where a passerby offered to buy the 5 cent tin for a quarter.

“That got the wheels turning,” he told a Norfolk, Va., reporter in 2007. “There was a business.”

Morrison was fighter pilot in World War II, spending time in a German prison camp after being shot down over Italy. He eventually came home and settled with his wife in California, just as the US was becoming fixated on all things space related. Morrison began marketing the “Flyin-Saucer” and then the “Pluto Platter,” which eventually became the “Frisbee” when students interchangeably used Frisbie brand pie tins with the brightly colored plastic disks. (The spelling was changed to avoid legal troubles.)

Morrison died of lung cancer on February 9th at his home in Monroe, Utah. He was 90.