Ideas Still Flying Out of Frisbee Inventor

Inventor Ed Headrick, who moved to isolated Lake County from Los Angeles five years ago to escape urban congestion, has plenty of room to fling his greatest invention--the Frisbee.

Today Headrick sells another of his inventions, the Disc Golf course and the plastic flying saucers to fling into them. And he’s also trying to clean up Clear Lake’s algae with a water-borne vacuum cleaner.

A pan from Mother Frisbee’s Pie Co. of Bridgeport, Conn., hangs on the wall of his Lakeport Disc Golf manufacturing office.

Students Had an Idea

Headrick said students at Yale and Harvard found that pans from the pie company provided cheap thrills for scaling, or the throwing of flat objects.

That gave him the idea and in 1963 he went to Wham-O with a proposal to make the Frisbee the toy company’s Hula Hoop of the decade.

Before that Headrick ran the Pioneer Water Heating Co., not a proper business for the self-proclaimed “adult kid.”

“The reason Wham-O was successful was that I stumbled onto a philosophy,” he said. “It wasn’t because of my brilliance.”

The philosophy was, “If you’re interested in freedom, you have to practice it yourself,” he said.

Headrick said the Frisbee became “the emblem of the unruly, something for people who were anti-everything to be pro-something. You almost got the feeling you can control it in flight.”

Headrick said working for a big company eventually “wasn’t fun anymore.”

“I did more than sympathize with some of these people in the ‘60s who didn’t like organized business. You can’t make toys that are fun in a non-fun atmosphere.”

The Frisbee didn’t get off the ground right away, he said. It didn’t soar until he found the untapped student market.

The first Frisbees, put out in 1959 by the San Gabriel toy firm, had planetary names embossed on their tops. Headrick said people who were old enough to sling Frisbees refused because they looked too much like toys.

Headrick removed the planets and put on an upside-down set of Olympic rings, along with slim, raised grooves to make handling easier. The changes grabbed adults, especially students.

Could Clean Up Again

Headrick left Wham-O well after Frisbee sales took off.

Now he’d like to clean up by cleaning up Clear Lake.

He’s devised a water-borne vacuum cleaner he would like to set on the lake every year when the algae grows thick. He has been trying to convince county officials to back his idea to the tune of $60,000 to $70,000 a year.

So far, he’s had no luck, and algae just isn’t as much fun as Frisbee.