Crayola products

The company was founded in New York in 1885 as Binney & Smith by cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith. The first products made by the cousins have been dyes for industrial use, including red oxide pigments and carbon to give automobile tires their distinctive black color.

In 1900 the company added to their product palette chalkboard pencils, which led them to experiment with industrial materials such as cement, slate and talc. Thanks to these experiments, they managed to invent the first odorless white chalk, with which they won the gold medal at the 1902 St. Louis Missouri World's Fair.

In 1903 Binney & Smith invents the first child-friendly crayons, which he has sold under the name "Crayola." Alice Binney, the wife of the founder and former school teacher, has been the one who comes up with the name, which comes from the French "craie" (chalk) and "ola" (oil). The crayons of that time were made of wax, with opaque colors and were used mainly in industry.

The company has been a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards since 1984 and in 2007 it definitively changed its name to "Crayola" , after declaring that the "Crayola" brand is recognized in more than 80 countries and in 99% of American homes.

A Yale University study on odor recognition found that the scent of crayons is one of the smells best recognized by adults, ranking Crayola's crayons 18th, more recognizable than cheese (rank nineteen) and bleach (rank twenty), but no more recognizable than coffee (rank one) and peanut butter (rank two).

The National Museum of American History has a collection of crayons. The collection has started with a donation from Binney & Smith in 1998, consists of sixty-four crayons, but currently the collection consists of more than 300 boxes of crayons.