Eduard Binney

Every body's got them. or at least had them at one point in their life. box of 16, box of 24, 48, 64, 96, and if you are really lucky (like me) you had a box of 120. Im talking about crayons. and not those cheap imitation bastards, I'm talking the good stuff. Crayola.

Now, i've been lucky enough to visit the Crayola crayon factory in Pennsylvania. That place is baddass, and of course its located at the birthplace of Crayola.

Well, Crayola was born in Pa. but it really all started in NY where Joseph Binney owned a company that was responsible to adding black and red coloring to things like rubber car tires, and red paint. his son (Edward) and his nephew decided to expand the business to include other products such as shoe polish as well. The cousins bought a mill in Pa, and started producing pencils for school children, including award winning dustless chalk. the company that Edward's father ran used carbon to color the car tires and paint black, and carbon was far to toxic for school children. With  motivation to produce safe art supplies in a variety of colors, the cousins worked with wax development and color mixing to produce (drumroll please) Crayola Crayons.

The cousins went on to broaden thair art supply empire by adding paints, chalk, glue, markers, and other art supplies. crayons remain the corner stone of their work, as new colors are still added every year.

http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/crayons.html

http://www.crayola.com/corporate/timeline.cfm?n_id=77