Remembering George Ballas, inventor of the Weed Eater

Thanks to George Ballas, or rather the poisonous snake that bit his groundskeeper, we no longer have to get down on our hands and knees with shears to trim the weeds away from our gardens and patios. Instead of feeling snakebit when he lost his worker, Ballas got inspired and created the first string trimmer out of a popcorn can and some wires. “It made a helluva noise, but it ripped up the turf and tore away the grass,” Ballas, who died Saturday at 85, once told the Los Angeles Times.

For Ballas, a dance studio owner, mowing the grass was one thing. But tidying up the edges of his three-acre estate was quite another, according to an obituary in The Wall Street Journal . Looking for inspiration, he found it in a car wash when he saw that the spinning washer bristles cleaned without harming the vehicle. So he took an old popcorn can , attached some unruly wires, attached the contraption to a rotating edger and revved it up. Bingo. Soon after, Ballas found an engineer to help bring his design to market. The first Weed Eater models, which you can see in this video , used monofilament fishing line rather than wire and ran on electricity and gas.

But the Weed Eater isn’t his only legacy. After getting out of the Air Force (he served in World War II and Korea) Ballas married a dance instructor and they went into business managing Arthur Murray and Fred Astaire studios. His son, Corky, who has a tribute to his father on his website, became a professional dancer as did his grandson Mark. You may have seen Mark Ballas on Dancing with the Stars where he’s been partners with both Kristi Yamaguchi, who won, and Bristol Palin, who didn’t, and many other celebs.

Today Weed Eater is owned by Poulan Pro (Ballas sold out in the Seventies). While models we’ve tested tend to be outclassed by such brands as Echo and Stihl in our string trimmer tests , Weed Eater remains a well-established brand with prominent placement in big-box retailers and home centers.