Frisbee

"Frisbee" redirects here. For the sport, see Ultimate (sport). For the amusement ride, see Frisbee (ride). For the type of UFO, see Flying saucer.

A flying disc with the Wham-O registered trademark "Frisbee"

A flying disc is a disc-shaped glider that is generally plastic and roughly 20 to 25 cm (7.9 to 9.8 in) in. diameter, with a lip. 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 uncapitalized 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.

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.

Someone catching a flying disc

Walter Frederick Morrison discovered a market for the modern-day flying disc in 1938 when he and future wife Lucile were offered US25 cents for a cake pan that they were tossing back and forth to each other on the beach in Santa Monica, California. "That got the wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for 5 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. They continued their business until World War II, when he served in the Army Air Force, flying a P-47s and spent time as a prisoner of war. Returning from the war, 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 it 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 they used wires to make the discs hover like they were, so they used a sales pitch, "The flyin' saucer is free, but the invisible wire is $1". "That's where we learned we could sell these things, because people ate them up [meaning, were enthusiastic about them]." Morrison and Franscioni ended their partnership in 1950. Morrison formed his own company in 1953 called American Trends to sell a similar design and after further refinements in 1955, Morrison began producing a new disc, which he called the Pluto Platter. He sold the rights to Wham-O in 1956 and in 1958, Morrison was awarded U.S. Design Patent D183,626 for his flying disc.

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 Connecticut college students were calling the Pluto Platter by that name, the term "Frisbee" coming from the name of the Bridgeport, CT pie manufacturer Frisbie Pie Company. "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."

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.

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 "Rings of Headrick" and marketed and pushed the Professional Model Frisbee and "Frisbee" as a sport. (U.S. Patent 3,359,678).

Headrick, who became known as the father of disc sports, 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.

Flying disc games

Main article: Flying disc games

• Crosbee
• Disc dog
• Disc golf
• Dodge disc
• Double disc court
• Durango boot

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• Flutterguts
• Freestyle
• Fricket (a.k.a. disc cricket, cups, Suzy sticks, crispy wickets)
• Friskee
• Goaltimate

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• Guts
• Hot box
• Kan-jam
• Polish horseshoes
• Schtick
• Ultimate

Physics

Main article: Physics of flying discs

Flying disc freestyle

Lift is generated in primarily the same way as a traditional asymmetric airfoil, that is, by accelerating upper airflow so that a pressure difference gives rise to a lifting force. Small ridges near the leading edge act as turbulators, reducing flow separation by forcing the airflow to become turbulent after it passes over the ridges.

The rotating flying disc has a vertical angular momentum vector, stabilizing its attitude, not altitude, gyroscopically. Depending on the cross-sectional shape of the airfoil the amount of lift generated by the front and back parts of the disc can be unequal. If the disc were not spinning, its absence would tend to make it 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. It can be observed by holding the disc horizontally at eye level and looking at the rim while slowly rotating the disc.

See also

• Tron and Tron: Legacy, science-fiction films that make use of flying discs in their computerized combat.
• Ken Westerfield, a pioneering disc player (history of freestyle)
• Flying disc techniques

References

Further reading

• Johnson, Stancil E. D., M. D., Frisbee, A Practitioner's Manual and Definitive Treatise, New York City: Workman Publishing Company, 1975 | ISBN 978-0-911104-53-0
• Horowitz, Judy, and Bloom, Billy, Frisbee: More Than A Game of Catch, Champagne, Ill.: Leisure Press, Champagne, 1984 | ISBN 978-0-88011-105-8
• Norton, Gary, The Official Frisbee Handbook, New York, Toronto, London: Bantam Books, 1972
• Danna, Mark, and Poynter, Dan, Frisbee Players' Handbook, Santa Barbara, Cal.: Parachuting Publications, 1978 | ISBN 0-915516-19-5
• Tips, Charles, and Roddick, Dan, Frisbee Sports & Games, Millbrae, Cal.: Celestial Arts, Millbrae, Cal., 1979 | ISBN 978-0-89087-233-8
• Tips, Charles, Frisbee by the Masters, Millbrae, Cal.: Celestial Arts, 1977 | ISBN 978-0-89087-142-3
• Morrison, Fred & Kennedy, Phil, Flat Flip Flies Straight! True Origins of the Frisbee, Westerfield, Conn.: Wormhole Publishers, 2006 | ISBN 0-9774517-4-7
• Lorenz, Ralph; Spinning Flight: Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras and Skipping Stones, New York City: Copernicus, 2006 | ISBN 978-0-387-30779-4

External links

• Flying Disc Federation of India
• World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) – international sports governing body for flying disc games
• Frisbee Collective – a gallery of over 200 fly discs from all over the globe