In the 15th Century, Gutenberg built a machine that stamped letters, and suddenly regular people could own books. The simple cotton gin changed an entire economy. The inventors of internal combustion engines ushered in a global industrial revolution. None of these guys accepted the limits they were handed. Nor did Alan Adler, inventor of the Epic.

I've thrown the Epic for twenty years, which means I've spent two decades collecting the same reaction. The disc leaves my hand in a barrel roll, turning over itself like nothing that flies should. That's the "woah." Then it flattens, catches its line, and climbs away like a backhand drive thrown by a thirty foot giant. Every head on the course goes back. Other discs will take a thumber. None of them will do that, and none of them will go 480 feet.

Four hundred and eighty feet, overhand.

The roll is the whole trick. The disc spends the first half of its flight converting a violent overhand throw into a tight epicyclic rotation, and the second half spending it, holding a line forever and landing so far downrange that I've genuinely lost it in the sun's glare. You have to throw it hard. Beat it in first, as a new one is far too overstable to reveal its true potential.

The wheel let us move loads. The press let us move ideas. The Epic lets us move a disc a distance that should require a machine. I'm not claiming these are equivalent achievements, rather that they belong on the same list, and that history simply hasn't gotten around to noticing this newest entry.

Critics say it's a piece of injection-molded plastic. Well, the alphabet is mere scratches. Powered flight is a fan bolted to a hollow tube. All great inventions are unimpressive in their materials and unmistakable in their consequences.

Buy it. Throw it. Recalibrate what you believe a human arm can do.