A pioneer of American fitness whose simple invention may have made more people healthy than any other device died Tuesday at his home in Utah. Walter Fredrick “Fred” Morrison, who was 90, invented the Frisbee.

Morrison first got the idea for a flying disc tossing tin cake pans on the beach with his wife, Lu. After serving in World War II as a pilot, he pursued his fascination with flying discs, selling a more aerodynamic version of the cake tin at county fairs and department stores. The public’s intrigue was piqued during the 1950s during the nation’s fascination with UFOs. Ever the entrepreneur, Morrison painted little portholes on his discs, creating a toy that not only was fun to throw and catch, but carried with it the prospect of little green men paying a visit. In 1957, Morrison sold the manufacturing and production rights to what he called the “Pluto Platter” to Wham-O Manufacturing.

Wham-O renamed the device the Frisbee after the Frisbie Pie Co., a New England bakery who’s pie tins were popular with recreating college kids. The Frisbee soon took off, becoming synonymous with the free-spiritedness of the 1960s. While it has retained that aura, it also spawned organized sports, such as Ultimate Frisbee and Frisbee Golf. More than 200 million Frisbees have been sold and the discs are tossed worldwide.

The health impact of Mr. Morrison’s creation is hard to quantify, but it’s difficult to imagine any one device — not the Abdominizer, not the Gazelle, not even the Thighmaster — having anywhere close to the impact on our health that the Frisbee has. Were it not for the Frisbee, the Freshman 15 might easily be the Freshman 50, for there’s no more effective way to get a sluggish kid out of his dorm room than to ask, “Hey, wanna throw the Frisbee in the quad?” Parents may squawk at doing any number of things with their kids — swing on the swingset, play tag, jump rope — but pull a Frisbee out of the closet and dad’s out the door faster than Murray the lab. And kids, once they get over throwing the thing on the roof, can amuse themselves for hours with this simple piece of plastic.

Part of the Frisbee’s allure is that the non-athletic, with the right technique, can fling the thing as far as any John Elway. Because of its hang time, even the slowest among us have the illusion of speed as we race to settle in under a landing disc. Speed, agility, strength, endurance — a Frisbee somehow brings out these traits in all of us. And it’s not until well after our flinging frolic in the park has ended that our full body informs us we’ve had a full-body workout. The Frisbee managed to give us the best workout we never knew we were getting.

Take a moment this weekend to honor Mr. Morrison by visiting your neighborhood park and sailing one to the heavens. And remember that Frisbee is even more fun in the snow.