Frisbie Pies Tin (c. 1920's)

Frisbie's Pies 

The story of the Frisbee begins not in a toy factory, but at the Frisbie Pie Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which opened in 1871 and baked thousands of pies daily for local university students. By the early 20th century, students at nearby Yale University discovered that the company’s empty, lightweight metal pie tins possessed remarkable aerodynamic properties when flipped upside down and tossed through the air. To warn unsuspecting passersby of an incoming metal projectile, throwers would shout "Frisbie!"—a tradition that turned the simple act of finishing dessert into a campus-wide sport. This grassroots phenomenon eventually caught the attention of inventor Walter Frederick Morrison, who, after seeing the popularity of the "Flying Saucer" craze in the 1940s, designed a plastic version of the disc to improve its flight stability. When the toy company Wham-O purchased the rights to Morrison's "Pluto Platter" in 1957, they learned of the Connecticut pie-tin tradition and officially trademarked the name as "Frisbee," forever linking the multi-million dollar global sport to its humble, flaky-crusted origins in a New England bakery.

Donated by: John Babina III