WEB PAGE NO.2794 19H JUNE 2021 Crayola Crayons 1ST PICTURE: Range of Crayons

2nd PICTURE Original Packaging

3RD PICTURE Tin of Crayons

4TH PICTURE Crayola Factory and Crayola Experience

Crayola Crayons Today you can buy a box of Crayola crayons in 152 colorus today, but way back in 1903, they only came in eight colours. And that first-ever box of Crayola brand crayons was a huge improvement over the first crayons ever sold, which only came in black. Wax crayons were mostly used for industrial purposes until two cousins Edwin Binney and Harold Smith introduced their brightly coloured crayons for kids. Edwin’s wife, Alice, made up the name Crayola by combining “craie” (French for chalk) with “oleaginous” (which means oily). In other words, oily chalk! It’s hard to understand just how different modern crayons are from their ancestors without a look at the history of the crayon. In 1864 Edwin’s dad, Joseph Binney, started the Peekskill Chemical Works in upstate New York. The firm made charcoal and lamp black, a black pigment made from the soot left over when oil is burnt. When the two cousins took over in 1885, they started making new things, like a red pigment for barn paints and a carbon black that made rubber tires stronger. They made a number of industrial products, but from 1900 to 1902, they started making pencils and dustless chalk for school blackboards. Coloured crayons were a natural next step. But the original pigments they had used were not safe for children so they developed crayons that would be safe if swallowed. The first box they sold had just eight colours and the colours were black, brown, blue, red, purple, orange, yellow, and green.. Over the years, as the company has grown, it has introduced more than 400 different colours. You can find metallic crayons, crayons with glitter in them, crayons that smell like flavours’, crayons that wash out of clothes, and even egg-shaped crayons. Nowadays, plenty of other companies make coloured crayons for children too. However, europe was the birthplace of the “modern” crayon, a man-made cylinder that resembled contemporary sticks. The first such crayons are purported to have consisted of a mixture of charcoal and oil. Later, powdered pigments of various hues replaced the charcoal. It was subsequently discovered that substituting wax for the oil in the mixture made the resulting sticks sturdier and easier to handle. Surprisingly every one of these iconic art supplies are made at a factory in Easton, Pennsylvania. The plant churns out the top-selling crayons at a rate of 650 crayons per minute, with a total production of up to 13.5 million per day in 400 different colours. On average, the facility makes 3 billion Crayola crayons per year. Beyond Crayola, other brand name crayon manufacturers today include Rose Art Industries and Dixon Ticonderoga, the successor to the American Crayon Company. Numerous suppliers create generic brand or store brand crayons. These are typically found in supermarkets. In 2000 there was concern about potential contamination of asbestos in many popular brands of crayons after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported in May of that year that they had tests performed finding that three brands of crayons contained asbestos. In a follow-up study released in June the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) found traces of asbestos fibres in three crayons and larger amounts of transitional fibres which can be misinterpreted as asbestos as a result of using talc as a binding agent in additional crayons. CPSC declared the risk to be low, but said that because of the concerns it had asked manufacturers to reformulate the concerned crayons and commended them for their swift agreement to do so. I remember using Crayola Crayons at school and also buying them for my children and grandchildren. Isn’t it great to know that there are some things that have not changed over the years!!! STAY IN TOUCH PETER