Local pie tin first Frisbee, legend holds
As the unseasonably mild fall draws to a close, groups of students on Old Campus are enjoying the last days of warm weather by indulging in a classic college pastime — tossing a Frisbee.
But many passersby might not realize that Yale may have a special connection to the disc. According to a nearly century-old myth, a group of Yale students invented the frisbee from throwing around a pie tin, thus adding the popular item to an illustrious list of Connecticut’s firsts.
Although this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Frisbee’s official copyright by a non-Yalie, many in...
A Yale graduate named Jack Flobeck told me this morning that he played a big role in popularizing the Frisbie by taking Mrs. Frisbie pie tins from the dining hall and selling them out of his dorm room. He said that on spring break of that year students took them to beaches all over the world, and that someone who saw it in California started molding them from plastic and used the name from the back of the pie tin. Apparently Jack did not know that he had played a role in the history of the frisbee until he heard himself mentioned on the Johnny Carson show.