From the 9th century to a modern sport...
The word "Frisbee" is to most people equivalent with a plastic disc used to play with on the beach, but modern research can track the origin of the word as far back as to 9th century Europe

That is to the Frisian people who back then inhabitated the areas around the river Rhen. This people was known as merchants and distributed and sold many things in the British isles, the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe. Their descendants still habitate the area known as "Friesland" in northern Netherlands.

With the vikings to England...

So that accounts for the "Fris" part of our word. The rest comes from the old viking word for village - "by" or "bi". This word came to Britain with the Danish vikings on their raids of the british islands.

To America in the 17th century...
Geografically the word can first be found in the village of "Frisebi" (Village of the Frisians) nowadays known as "Frisby-on-the-wreake" west of Melton Mowbry in England.

The next part of our story takes place around 1635, when an English family from the Melton Mowbry area emigrated to Connecticut in Northern America. The family name was Frisby, and this family leads us to modern time.

The famous pie tin...
Their late relative William Russel Frisbie founded the bakery "The W.R. Frisbie Pie Bakery" in 1871.

In 1905 the name had changed to "The Frisbie Pie Company", and it was here, in the parking lot outside the new three story company building built in 1915, that the frisbee as we know actually saw the light of day.

Bakery employees found out that the light pie tin pans where great for tossing through the air, and "frisbie-ing" soon developed into a favorite lunch break pastime.

In the mid 1940's the innovator Fred Morrison saw the students working in the pie bakery tossing empty pie forms to eachother, and realised the potential.

He took a couple of tinfoil frisbees to california and there started manufacturing the first plastic Frisbees together with his partner Warren Franscioni.

The rights to this amazing product were soon sold to the American company Wham-O, who produced the toy for many years, starting in 1957. It is estimated that Wham-O from 1957 to 1999 has sold over 300 000 000 frisbees.

The trademark...
The modern word "Frisbee" is actually a Wham-O registered trade mark, but most people (especially outside the USA) use the word for all flying discs. In "The complete book of frisbee", author and long time player Victor Malafronte tells an interesting story that seems to indicate that the word frisbee actually was in general use well before the Wham-O trademark. He also reveals flying disc history going back into the 1930's!
 

From toy to hi-tech...
Wham-O was later bought by Mattel Sports. (Yes, the same Mattel who manufactures the world famous "Barbie" dolls.)

In 1997, Wham-O became independent once again as a group of investors purchased the company from Mattel. Nowadays there are several other manufacturers who produces flying discs.

Innova-Champion and Discraft are two of the biggest, and they've done a lot to develop the original idea into todays hi-tech flying discs.

An unconfirmed estimate actually said that there were more flying discs sold in the USA anually in the mid 70's than footballs, basketballs and baseballs altogether!

It didn't take long before inventive people developed ways to compete with this brilliant toy. An early version of the game Guts frisbee was played as early as 1955 at Princeton University.

In 1968 the students of Columbia High School in New Jersey started developing the game that we now know as Ultimate. Golf also came pretty naturally and in 1975 the world's first permanent Disc Golf Course was built in Oak Grove, Pasadena.

Sweden has been at the frisbee frontiers for a long time. Here Kicki Dahlström putts at hole 14 on Järva Disc Golf Park, which was Europe's first pay-to-play disc golf course.

Sweden soon followed and in 1978 Sweden's and Europes's first disc golf course was opened on Kärsön in Stockholm. The first official World championships was played in 1974.

An important landmark in Sweden was the year of 1983 when frisbee was recognized as an official sport, through the Swedish Frisbee Association being elected a full member of the Swedish Federation of Sports. This was also the year when the "Eagle", the first beveled edge golf disc was manufactured by Champion discs Inc.

Today flying disc sports is growing worldwide at a fast pace. The PDGA (Professional Disc Golf Association) member numbering is up over #25000. Actually disc sport statistics shows a yearly growth of around 12-15%!

 Frisbee Inventors