History of the Weed Eater

Many people claim that they are the original inventor of the weed eater. There are those that claim it was invented in England, and others that believe the weed whacker was first invented in Japan. The reality is that George Ballas invented the weed whacker in 1972 in Houston Texas.

Ballas was an inventor and the founder of the Weed Eater. He was interviewed recently by TheBuisnessMakers.com. Until Ballas invented the weed whacker, people needed to trim weeds and grassy areas that they couldn’t get to with a lawn mower with their hands, or hedge trimmers, making the task very difficult and time consuming to say the least. Also dangerous, since getting down on your knees to hand trim weedy areas make you more susceptible to garden snakes or other snakes and rodents and wildlife to attack. Ballas noticed that this was not the best way to trim weeds in a lawn, so started thinking about safer and easier ways to take trim weeds in lawns.

As the story goes, George was one day taking his car to a car wash and was intrigued by the circular plastic washing brushes that would clean in between cracks and crevices of the car without doing any damage to the surface. Ballas thought long and hard as to what he could use to apply the idea from the car wash and make a weed eater. He finally came up with the idea of attaching the bottom of a popcorn can with radio wire attached to a wheeled edge trimmer and after a few unsuccessful attempts at making this new device work he finally got it going, and the weed wacker began its infancy stages of development. 

Later when a worker that George Ballas had working for him who was an experienced machinist, helped George put together the idea – the Weed Eater was developed. George Ballas started the Weed Eater company and the rest is history. The Weed Eater soon took off after being promoted on Television during the 1970’s. The weed eater solved a huge problem that many home owners and gardening professionals had, that of trimming weeds in hard to reach and dangerous areas.