The Frisbee, a plastic flying disc, has been a required component of any American child's toy collection for most of the latter half of the twentieth century. It is widely believed that Ivy League students began flinging and catching pie and cookie tins in the 1920s and 1930s, naming the practice "Frisbee-ing," after a local pie company. Wham-O Toy Company, producers of the Hula Hoop, began mass production of Frisbees in 1957.

A group of frisbee enthusiasts.

An affordable and portable toy with no set rules, the Frisbee enjoyed a boom in sales and public familiarity in the anti-establishment atmosphere of the late 1960s. This new generation of Frisbee fans invented Frisbee Golf, Guts, and Ultimate Frisbee, but it was freestyle frisbee, with its behind-the-back and between-the-legs catches, trick throws, and leaping, Frisbee-catching dogs, that did the most for visibility of the growing sport. By the end of the twentieth century, over 50 colleges featured interscholastic Ultimate Frisbee teams, and Frisbee Golf courses peppered suburbs across the continent. And it was still a mark of pride among American youth to be able to fling a Frisbee straight and far.

Further Reading:

Johnson, Dr. Stancil E. D. Frisbee: A Practitioner's Manual and Definitive Treatise. New York, Workman Publishing Company, 1975.