It is well known that crayons are the best tool for children to learn color painting. The invention of crayons inspired (激励) children's imagination (想象力) and creativity and made their childhood colorful.
In 1885, Mr. Edwin Binney and Mr. C. Harold Smith set up Binney & Smith Company in New York. The company's early products were mainly red paint and black powder (粉末) for making tires (轮胎). In 1900, at the new factory in Easton, Black Mill, the company made the first pencil for the school. In 1902, under the demand (需求) of school teachers, the company began to produce dust-free chalk, and achieved great success, and won the gold medal at the Saint Louis World Expo.
Alice Binney, Mr. Edwin Binney's wife, was a teacher, found that children like to use a kind of thick black pencil to draw on paper. This was just the early crayon with only black color. So she suggested that the company should produce crayons in many colors. In 1903, they experimented with a series of colors and invented the world's first box of modern crayons with black, brown, blue, red, green, orange, yellow and purple.
Then Alice Binney proposed to create the "Crayola" brand. She combined (结合) "Craie" in French with "oily" in English to create the new word—"crayola". Since then, crayola has become the synonym (代名词) of crayon. Crayola was founded in 2007. Until now, Crayola has been one of the most popular children's products brands in the world. With the development of science and technology, today's crayons have reached 152 colors.
