Tribute To Fred Morrison - Frisbee Inventor

Okay, it's a shame that a lot of people only get honoured when they pass away but in this case I'll just go with the flow; if it wouldn't be for this man we might not have known this game.
His name is Walter Fred Morrison, and as the official inventor of the frisbee he died last tuesday 09/02/2010 at the blessed age of 90.
As is common with inventions that go way back it isn't always clear who was exactly the first one to invent something because there were no real means of communicating with people who might be doing the same thing in a different location. That's why some say there are other persons who also invented a frisbee-like toy around the same time.
But hey, I've come to honour mr. Morrison in this post and so here's his story in short:

Fred Morrison, a Los Angeles based inventor and carpenter, invented the first flying disc called the Pluto Platter (see picture on the left) in 1948.

Due to not being able of making his disc very popular he sold his invention somewhere in the mid fifties to a toy company called Wham-O.

This toy company started a huge advertising campaign and also patented the name Frisbee. Frisbee is still a registered trademark (by Wham-O) and the name finds it's origins in the Frisbie Pie Company. This was a pie company that produced pies by baking them in pie tins (a metal shape used to bake the pie in) which students used to throw around with.

In 1967 some students at the Columbia High School in New Jersey (USA) started a game with this frisbee and called it 'ultimate' because they believed it was 'the ultimate game experience'.

The rest of the story is pretty obvious (ultimate grew and spread all over the world...) but all of this was due to one man who wanted to make a a plastic version of the Frisbie that could fly further and with better accuracy than a tin pie plate.

Picture above: Fred Morrison in a space suit throwing his Pluto Platter, as there was a big wave of interest in all things that had to do with outer space and UFO's and so on...

If you like more information about this, click on the links below.

It's actually quite interesting to read where all of this comes from.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa980218.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/12/BATM1C0CVH.DTL

Join a tribute group : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Beat-Heat-Sushi/300057608930?ref=nf#!/group.php?v=wall&gid=312689323872

Some would say "if you want to know where you are at now, you should know your history.."; well here's your chance.

Thanks to everyone who made an effort to update me on this news !

I received 11 emails, 2 text messages and one phone call from a local newspaper called 'De Gentenaar' and after another phonecall me and some other Gentle players were interviewed by AVS, the local Ghent TV company.

(Aan alle Gentley's die dit lezen, het is te bewonderen op AVS op woensdag of donderdag- hun programmatie wordt steeds geloopt, komt voor in het item Kiosk-TV, kleine kans dat het daarna ook online komt.)

Thanks, Fred !

"Innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress."