<P> Weed Eater was a string trimmer company founded in 1971 in Houston, Texas by George C. Ballas, Sr., the inventor of the device . </P> <P> The idea for the Weed Eater trimmer came to him from the spinning nylon bristles of an automatic car wash . He thought that he could come up with a similar technique to protect the bark on trees that he was trimming around . </P>

When did the first weed eater come out