The Man Who Invented the Frisbee Was Turned Into One After He Died

Ed Headrick and the Frisbee He Perfected

Ed Headrick did not invent the flying disc from scratch. The concept of a throwable disc dates to the mid-1950s when Wham-O purchased the rights to a design by Fred Morrison, who had been inspired by the pie tins that college students were tossing around on campuses. What Headrick did, starting in 1964, was transform the wobbling, unpredictable plastic disc into the stable, aerodynamically reliable Frisbee that people actually use.

Headrick's key innovation was the addition of concentric ridges on the top surface of the disc, which he called "rings of Headrick" and which are formally known as flight rings or Bernoulli rings. These ridges stabilized the disc in flight by redistributing airflow across the surface and reducing turbulence. They gave the disc a more predictable flight path and made it genuinely catchable at a distance. When Headrick filed the patent for the stabilized disc design in 1967, he created what is essentially the modern Frisbee.

More Than a Toy Maker

Headrick did not stop at the Frisbee. In 1975, he invented disc golf — a sport in which players throw flying discs into metal basket targets following a layout similar to golf — and designed the first pole hole disc golf target, which became the standard equipment for the sport. Disc golf grew from a few informal courses in California to thousands of courses worldwide, becoming one of the fastest-growing outdoor sports of the early 21st century.

Headrick also helped establish the Disc Golf Association and the Professional Disc Golf Association, providing the organizational infrastructure the sport needed to develop competitive play, official rules, and a professional circuit. The game he invented has now been played by tens of millions of people, and there are over 10,000 disc golf courses in the United States alone.

The Final Throw

Ed Headrick died on August 12, 2002, at age 78, and his family honored a wish he had made clear over the years: he wanted his ashes to be incorporated into memorial flying discs. Wham-O and those close to Headrick arranged for a small run of memorial discs to be produced by mixing his cremated remains into the plastic mold. These discs were distributed to family members, close friends, and colleagues — people who had known him and the sport he had devoted his life to.

The decision reflected something genuinely characteristic of how Headrick related to his work. He was not merely an inventor who had created a product — he was an enthusiast who had found in the flying disc a vehicle for a philosophy about play, outdoor recreation, and accessible sport. Disc golf, specifically, was designed to be playable anywhere there was open space, with equipment costs that put it within reach of almost anyone. Headrick reportedly described playing disc golf as "getting closer to God."

The Legacy That Flies On

The memorial discs are not available commercially — they were made as personal keepsakes rather than as a product — but the story of their creation has become part of the lore surrounding both Frisbee and disc golf. It is the kind of story that people who love a sport enjoy telling because it reinforces the identity they have built around it: that disc golf was founded by someone who cared about it enough to become literally part of the equipment.

Headrick's flight rings, a patent he secured nearly 60 years ago, are still visible on virtually every mass-produced flying disc sold today. His ashes are, in a small number of discs, still technically in play — or at least still flying, if anyone throws them.