{"id":8618,"date":"2010-02-12T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=8618"},"modified":"2010-02-11T23:51:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T04:51:44","slug":"it-is-impossible-to-fathom-the-impact-fred-morrison-has-had-on-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=8618","title":{"rendered":"“It is impossible to fathom the impact Fred Morrison has had on the world…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

…through the invention of such a simple object know as the Frisbee”<\/p>\n

Who hasn’t owned and thrown a frisbee, one of a handful of quintessentially-American inventions whose trademarked name became the descriptor of the entire category.<\/p>\n

Fred Morrison put his World War II experience as a fighter pilot to peaceful use<\/a> by inventing what became known as the Frisbee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Frisbee became the frisbee; Kleenex became kleenex.<\/p>\n

Raised in Utah and California, Mr. Morrison began his fascination with flying disks as a teen, throwing popcorn lids and then cake pans on the Santa Monica beach. In a memoir, Mr. Morrison wrote that a stranger once offered to buy one of his pans for a quarter.<\/p>\n

“At the time cake pans cost about a nickel,” Mr. Morrison wrote. “A business was born!” Mr. Morrison’s toy business was interrupted by World War II, during which he piloted bombers and fighters. He was shot down while flying a P-51 Mustang over Italy in 1945 and held as a POW. After the war, he used the knowledge he had gained in the Army Air Corps to design a more aerodynamic flying cake pan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because theretofore cake pans weren’t suitable for efficient flight?<\/p>\n

Morrison died this week and we will remember him by these words:<\/p>\n

“I never liked the name Frisbee…I thought it was stupid.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…but it paid the bills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…through the invention of such a simple object know as the Frisbee” Who hasn’t owned and thrown a frisbee, one of a handful of quintessentially-American inventions whose trademarked name became the descriptor of the entire category. Fred Morrison put his World War II experience as a fighter pilot to peaceful use by inventing what became […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8618"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8628,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8618\/revisions\/8628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}