Jun
30
Houston Man Who Invented Weed Eater Dies at 85.
Ballas got the idea for the Weed Eater, a device also commonly known as a weed whacker, while sitting in a car wash. He wondered whether the idea of spinning bristles, like the ones cleaning his car, could be applied to trimming grass and weeds in areas a lawnmower couldn’t reach.
He experimented with fishing wire that poked through holes in a tin can attached to the rotary of a lawn edger, and found that the spinning wires easily sliced through grass.
