One of the great toy innovations of the second half of the 1900s was the Frisbee, which was designed by Walter Frederick Morrison and his boss at that time, Warren Franscioni, who ran a family-owned bottled gas business in California.
Both men had been pilots during World War II.
The inspiration for their new toy was the metal pie tins that children had sailed through the air for many years prior to the plastic Frisbee, which was, literally, a garage invention.
The downward tilt in the Frisbee's surface allowed air pressure to give it the lift needed for smooth flight, and unlike a metal pie tin, the Frisbee was less likely to hurt when caught.
The two men's 1948 innovation couldn't have happened at a better time: during the UFO craze when seemingly everyone was seeing flying saucers.
The pair drifted apart after the gas business went under and Franscioni moved to South Dakota. Morrison kept producing the Frisbee under a different corporate name and eventually sold rights to the Frisbee to Wham-O, an established toy company that had started with the wooden slingshot. The flying disc soon became that firm's big seller.
When Franscioni found out what had happened, he began efforts to secure some of the money for himself but died in 1974 before any division of the profits could be made.
The name Frisbee was inspired by a Connecticut pie company, Frisbie Pies, whose tins were flung in prior times.
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