Title:
Inventor of Weed Eater Started a Revolution
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
George Ballas of Houston, Texas, lived a long life.
He was a businessman and property developer. A
university lecturer and author. A dancer and dance
studio owner whose son Corky and grandson Mark
followed in his footsteps into the dance world. And
Mr. Ballas was the inventor of the Weed Eater. The
man who found an easier way for people to cut grass
and weeds died in Houston on June twenty-fifth. He
was eighty-five years old. George Ballas was born in
Louisiana. He joined the military at seventeen. He
served in World War Two and the Korean War. After
the military, he became a dance teacher and
executive in the dance school industry. In the
nineteen fifties, he built a dance studio of his own
in Houston. People called it the biggest in the
world. Dance City USA had one hundred twenty
teachers. Mr. Ballas sold the studio in nineteen
sixty-four.By the early seventies, he was on to the
next big thing. The idea had come to him at a car
wash. He watched the needle-like bristles of the
brushes as they went round and round against his
car. Could a similar idea be used to cut grass in
places out of reach of someone pushing a lawn mower?
To find out, he placed lengths of fishing line
through holes in a tin can. He attached the can to
the spinning part of a motorized grass edger. The
result? A revolution for millions of people who cut
grass for a living or just to keep their neighbors
happy. George Ballas became known as the "Weed
King." As he once told the Houston Chronicle, "A
Weed Eater comes along once in a lifetime." His
invention grew into a company which he later sold.
Today his idea lives on in a new generation of
string trimmers and edgers that people often call
weed whackers.The noise may not be the nicest, but
neither is a loud mower. Trimmers work well in
corners and along walls and fences. They also avoid
the use of chemicals and the labor of pulling weeds
by hand. Of course, in the wrong hands, a weed
whacker can do damage like any other power tool. The
high-speed cutting line can whack pieces out of
trees, wood fences, stone surfaces or birdbaths. In
nineteen fifty-two, George Ballas married Maria
Louisa Marulanda, a flamenco dancer and film
actress. They were together for fifty-nine years
until his death.For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn
Presutti. You can find Voice of America's daily news
and information service for people learning English
at voaspecialenglish.com.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
