Imagine that you’re back in kindergarten. Someone is trying to keep you quiet and minimize your distractiveness so they hand you a coloring book and a box of Crayola crayons and you were content for hours. Have you ever thought about the history of Crayola and how it first came to be? The company we all know as Crayola began in all the way back in 1864 when Joseph Binney started a business called Peekskill Chemical Works. Although we know Crayola for their colorful art supplies, Peekskill Chemical Works began as a company that produced charcoal and lampblack. In 1880, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith joined Joseph Binney at the Peekskill headquarters in New York. 5 years later, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith decided to change the company’s name to Binney & Smith after Joseph Binney’s …show more content…
They spoke with school teachers and asked them what they needed in the classroom. This inspired the invention of dustless chalk, along with Staonal marking crayons introduced in 1902. The next year, 1903, was the year of true beginnings. Binney & Smith developed a formula for non-toxic, affordable crayons, and released their first box of crayons that they would grow to be so well-known for. This box contained a red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown, and a black crayon and sold for only 5¢. They named them Crayola, at the suggestion of Alice Binney, Edwin’s wife. The name comes from the French word for chalk, “craie,” and, “ola,” which was short for “oleaginous.” In 1936, the Crayon, Watercolor and Craft Institute was founded. This was an organization advocating for safety in art materials, especially those being used by children. Binney and Smith began hosting art workshops to teach people about their growing number of products. They wanted teachers to be aware of the benefits of these products and how to maximize their use in