William Russell Frisbie

I am the founder of the Frisbie Pie Company.

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From the English Wikipedia page on the Frisbie Pie Company:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisbie_Pie_Company

The Frisbie Pie Company was founded in 1871 by William Russell Frisbie in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when he bought and renamed a branch of the Olds Baking Company. The company was located on Kossuth Street in Bridgeport's East Side, where nearby schoolchildren tossed the plates around and yelled "Frisbie" so they wouldn't get hit by the spinning tins. The game the children played made its way to nearby college campuses.[1]

The "skilled person" theory of origin

It has been noted that Frisbie supplied pies to many Connecticut retailers and restaurants, including the Yale University campus. Yale students "discovered" that the pie tins, inverted, had an airfoil shape which enabled them to be thrown in various trajectories by a "skilled person".[2]

Commercialization

The name Frisbie was picked up by Wham-O, a California-based firm who had acquired the rights to the "Pluto Platter". As the pie tin was the same shape, it was discovered that children were already using the term for the flying disc and therefore a spelling amendment to avoid trademark infringement gave birth to the name Frisbee.

Frisbie pies today

The Bridgeport pie factory itself closed its doors on Kossuth Street in 1958. Frisbie brand pies are still produced in Worcester, Massachusetts by Table Talk.

In popular culture

In Back to the Future Part III, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) while time-travelling to the Wild West, throws a Frisbie pie plate at a derringer held by outlaw Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), disturbing his attempt to shoot Doctor Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd).[citation needed]

Disagreement on the name

People[who?] still disagree on whether the name of the company was the "Frisbie Pie Company" or the "Frisbie Baking Company".[citation needed]

References

• 1. "The Pie Plate that Made Bridgeport Famous". Bridgeport Public Library. Retrieved 2010-07-07.
• 2. Johnson, S. E. D. (1975). Frisbee, A Practitioner's Manual and Definitive Treatise. M.D. Workman Publishing Company. ISBN 0-911104-53-4.