This dual biography starts with a popcorn can lid tossed after Thanksgiving dinner in 1937 and a stranger on a Los Angeles beach offering Walter Frederick Morrison 25 cents for a five-cent cake pan. Morrison went on to fly P-47 Thunderbolts in World War II, survive time as a prisoner of war, and return with a working understanding of lift and drag that he applied to the Whirlo-Way, later renamed the Flying Saucer to ride the UFO craze, and finally the plastic Pluto Platter of 1955.

After Wham-O bought the rights in 1957 and borrowed the name from Yale students shouting Frisbie over flying pie tins, Ed Headrick arrived in 1964 and redesigned the disc with a thicker rim and the concentric ridges now called the Rings of Headrick. We break down why a disc needs spin to avoid flipping, how the Robins-Magnus force makes it curve, why the ridges work like golf ball dimples, and how Headrick built disc golf, the pole hole basket and an entire ecosystem of sports before having his ashes molded into memorial discs.

• The carnival pitch that the saucer is free but the invisible wire costs a dollar
• Why flexible polypropylene plastic was essential to making the disc a mainstream toy
• Gyroscopic stability, center of pressure and the turbulent boundary layer explained
• How ultimate discs, disc golf drivers, freestyle discs and dog discs evolved for different needs
• The origin of the Frisbie Pie Company name and the trademark spelling change