Flying disc

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"Frisbee" redirects here. For the sport, see Ultimate (sport). For the amusement ride, see Frisbee (ride). For the type of UFO, see Flying saucer. For the Italian channel, see frisbee Y6YF(TV channel).
A flying disc with the Wham-O registered trademark "Frisbee"

A flying disc is a disc-shaped gliding object or toy that is generally plastic and roughly 20 to 25 cm (7.9 to 9.8 in) in diameter with a lip,[1] used recreationally for throwing and catching, for example, in flying disc games. The shape of the disc, an airfoil in cross-section, allows it to fly by generating lift as it moves through the air while spinning. The term Frisbee, often used to generically describe all flying discs, is a registered trademark of the Wham-O toy company. Though such use is not encouraged by the company, the common use of the name as a generic term has put the trademark in jeopardy; accordingly, many "Frisbee" games are now known as "ultimate" or "disc" games.[2][3]

Flying discs are thrown and caught for free-form recreation and as part of many different flying disc games. A wide range of flying-disc variants are available commercially. Disc golf discs are usually smaller but denser and tailored for particular flight profiles to increase/decrease stability and distance. Disc dog sports use relatively slow flying discs made of more pliable material to better resist a dog's bite and prevent injury to the dog. Flying rings are also available; they typically travel significantly farther than any traditional flying disc. There are also illuminated discs meant for nighttime play; they are made of a phosphorescent plastic or contain battery-powered light-emitting diodes. Others whistle when they reach a certain velocity in flight.

History

Someone throwing a flying disc.
Person catching a flying disc

Fred Morrison discovered a market for the modern-day flying disc[4] in 1938 when he and future wife, Lucile, were offered 25 cents for a cake pan that they were tossing back and forth on a beach in Santa Monica, California, beach. "That got the wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for five cents, and if people on the beach were willing to pay a quarter for it, well - there was a business," Morrison told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2007.[5]

They continued their business until World War II, when Morrison served in the Army Air Force, flying a P-47s, and then was a prisoner of war. Mustered out, Morrison sketched a design for an aerodynamically improved flying disc that he called the Whirlo-Way. By 1948, after design modifications and experimentation with several prototypes, Morrison and business partner Warren Franscioni began producing the first plastic discs, renaming them the Flyin-Saucer in the wake of reported unidentified-flying-object sightings.

"We worked fairs, demonstrating it," Morrison told the Virginian-Pilot. The two of them once overheard someone saying the pair were using wires to make the discs hover, so they developed a sales pitch: "The Flyin-Saucer is free, but the invisible wire is $1." "That's where we learned we could sell these things," he said, because people were enthusiastic about them.

Morrison and Franscioni ended their partnership in early 1950, and in 1954 Morrison formed his own company, called American Trends, to buy and sell Flyin-Saucers, which were by then being made of a flexible polypropylene plastic from Southern California Plastics, the original molder. After learning that he could produce his own disc more cheaply, in 1955 Morrison designed a new model, the Pluto Platter, the archetype of all modern flying discs. He sold the rights to Wham-O on January 23, 1957, and in 1958 Morrison was awarded U.S. Design Patent D183,626 for his product.

In June 1957, Wham-O co-founder Richard Knerr decided to stimulate sales by giving the discs the additional brand name Frisbee (pronounced "friz'-bee"), after learning that Northeastern college students were calling the Pluto Platter by that name,[6] the term "Frisbee" coming from the name of the Bridgeport, CT pie manufacturer Frisbie Pie Company.[7] "I thought the name was a horror... terrible," Morrison told The Press-Enterprise of Riverside in 2007. In 1982, Morrison told Forbes magazine that he had received about US$2 million in royalty payments and said: "I wouldn't change the name of it for the world."[8]

The man behind the Frisbee's phenomenal success, however, was Edward "Steady Ed" Headrick (Pasadena, Cal., June 28, 1924 — La Selva Beach, Cal., August 12, 2002), hired in 1964 as Wham-O's new general manager and vice president in charge of marketing. Headrick soon redesigned the Pluto Platter by reworking the rim thickness and top design, creating a more controllable disc that could be thrown accurately.[9]

Sales skyrocketed for the toy, which was marketed as a new sport. In 1964, the first professional model went on sale. Headrick patented the new design, highlighting the new raised ridges (the "Rings of Headrick") that stabilized flight and marketed and pushed the Professional Model Frisbee and "Frisbee" as a sport. (U.S. Patent 3,359,678).[10]

Headrick, who became known as the father of disc sports,[11] later founded The International Frisbee Association (IFA) and began establishing standards for various sports using the Frisbee such as Distance, Freestyle and Guts. Upon his death, Headrick was cremated, and, as requested by him, his ashes were molded into memorial Frisbees and given to family and close friends.[12]

Flying disc games

Main article: Flying disc games

Physics

Main article: Physics of flying discs
Ultimate being played indoors.
Flying disc freestyle

Lift is generated in the same way as a traditional airfoil, that is, by deflecting air downward.

The rotating flying disc has a nearly vertical angular momentum vector, stabilizing its angle of attack via gyroscopic action. If the disc were not spinning, it would tend to pitch. When the disc is spinning, however, such torque would cause it to precess about the roll axis, causing its trajectory to curve to the left or the right. Most discs are designed to be aerodynamically stable so that this roll is self-correcting for a fairly broad range of velocities and rates of spin. Many disc golf discs, however, are intentionally designed to be unstable. Higher rates of spin lead to better stability, and, for a given rate of spin, there is generally a range of velocities that are stable.

Even a slight deformation in a disc (called a "taco," which in extreme cases looks like a taco shell) can cause adverse effects when throwing long range. A disk can be checked for these deformations by holding it horizontally at eye level and looking at the rim while slowly rotating it.

See also

References

  1. ↑ The word "disc" is commonly spelled with either a "c" ("disc") or a "k" ("disk").
  2. ↑ Overview of Trademark Law: Can trademark rights be lost?
  3. ↑ Losing Grip on the Frisbee
  4. ↑ Morrison, Fred; Phil Kennedy (January 2006). Flat Flip Flies Straight! True Origins of the Frisbee. Wethersfield, CT: Wormhole Publishers. ISBN 978-0-9774517-4-6. OCLC 233974379. 
  5. ↑ Earl Swift (27 May 2007). "50 years later, Frisbee still flying high". The Virginian-Pilot. Retrieved 28 July 2013. 
  6. ↑ "'Frisbee' Marks 50th Anniversary of Name Change". CTVglobemedia. 2007-06-16. Retrieved 2007-06-19. 
  7. ↑ "Frisbee Inventor Dies at 90 - CNN.com". CNN. 2010-02-12. Retrieved 2010-05-02. 
  8. ↑ McLellan, Dennis (2010-02-13). "Walter Fredrick Morrison Dies at 90; Father of the Frisbee". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-02-14. 
  9. ↑ Morrison, Fred; Phil Kennedy (January 2006). Flat Flip Flies Straight! True Origins of the Frisbee. Wethersfield, CT: Wormhole Publishers. ISBN 978-0-9774517-4-6. OCLC 233974379.  Fred Morrison: "Headrick had an eye for product design.... The "NEW LOOK" contributed mightily to its phenomenal success.... I've never known what financial arrangements Headrick had with Wham-O. It would have been interesting to know, but knowing wouldn't have changed anything. It was enough to know that under Headrick's guidance our increasing bank account was due to what he was doing."
  10. ↑ The First Flight of the Frisbee: The History of the Frisbee
  11. ↑ Malafronte, Victor A. (1998). F. Davis Johnson (ed.), ed. The Complete Book of Frisbee: The History of the Sport & the First Official Price Guide. Rachel Forbes (illus.). Alameda, Cal.: American Trends Publishing Company. ISBN 0-9663855-2-7. OCLC 39487710. 
  12. ↑ "Edward 'Steady Ed' Headrick" Find A Grave.

Further reading

  • Stancil E. D. Johnson (1975). Frisbee: Practitioner's Manual and Definitive Treatise. ISBN 978-0-911104-53-0. 
  • Horowitz, Judy; Bloom, Billy (1984). Frisbee: More Than a Game of Catch. Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN 978-0-88011-105-8. 
  • Norton, Gary, The Official Frisbee Handbook, New York, Toronto, London: Bantam Books, 1972
  • Danna, Mark; Poynter, Dan (1980). Frisbee Players' Handbook. Para Pub. ISBN 978-0-915516-19-3. 
  • Tips, Charles; Roddick, Dan (1979). Frisbee, sports and games. Celestial Arts Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-89087-233-8. 
  • Tips, Charles (1977). Frisbee by the Masters. Celestial Arts Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-89087-142-3. 
  • Morrison, Fred; Kennedy, Phil (2006). Flat Flip Flies Straight: True Origins of the Frisbee. ISBN 978-0-9774517-4-6. 
  • Lorenz, Ralph (2006). Spinning flight: dynamics of frisbees, boomerangs, samaras, and skipping stones. Springer Verlag. ISBN 978-0-387-30779-4. 

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