July 14, 2026 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, from bifocals and the cotton gin to the automobile and the iPhone, America has a long history of inventions that changed the world. But not every invention was born from necessity—some were created simply for fun. In this episode, author Natascha Biebow joins us to share the colorful true story of Edwin Binney, the inventor of Crayola crayons, as told in her children's book The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories
to show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Americans over the century have been known for
our inventions, from the bifocals to the cottingen, from the
(00:32):
airplane to the iPhone. This country has produced creations that
make our lives better. But sometimes we invent things with recreation,
not productivity in mind. Natasha Bibo, author of The Crayon Man,
The true story of the invention of Crayola crayons is
here to tell us the story of Edwin Binney.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yes Binnie, who was the inventor of the Crayola craons
was the son of Joseph Binnie and he was educated
in England and Germany and came to America around eighteen
sixty and he settled in a place called Shrub Oak,
(01:19):
which is near Peakskill, New York, and there he started
a chemical works and began producing charcoal. Shortly afterwards, in
eighteen sixty seven, he decided to move to New York
City and set up as a distributor, and so he
started distributing his products, which were mainly lamp black paints
and imported colors. And Edwin Binnie was born in eighteen
(01:41):
sixty six, so just before he moved to New York City,
and already as a child, Edwin BINNI loved nature and
he was a strong swimmer, So he spent a lot
of time doing things like swimming, fishing, hunting, sailing, and
just generally loved being outside. That was something that people
(02:03):
hadn't really explored a lot, like why did he invent
the Krayola crayons, So it was the first clue in
my research. Some of his family members mentioned and in
the people who work for him mentioned how much he
loved color, and I think that love for color came
from his connection to nature. Once he had invented Krayola crans,
(02:27):
people did mention that he would bring colorful buquet of
flowers and fruits and vegetables from his garden into the
office to inspire people and also just because he loved
sharing that part of his life. So he was actually
quite well educated by those standards. I mean we're talking
(02:47):
late eighteen hundreds, So he studied in high school till
he was fifteen, and then like many young men, and
so he started working as a bookkeeper for his dad
in the Peakskill Chemical works, and by the age of
seventeen he was a traveling salesman for the company. And
his cousin C. Harold Smith, who's the co inventor and
(03:09):
founder of the company that created the Crayola crayons, he
came to work in the business also by about eighteen
seventy nine, and mister Binny, the Dad Joseph, he was
quite rigorous. He trained them into how to be really
good salesmen, and eventually they became responsible for the pigment business,
(03:29):
which is basically lamp black charcoal and red iron oxide,
which is that kind of reddish paint that you see
on the barns and lots of places around the US,
especially you know, rural places. And by eighteen eighty five,
Dad Joseph retired and he passed on the business to
(03:50):
Edwin and Harold. So by nineteen they were kind of
running their own business and they formed the partnership that
became bin and Smith, and this was the company that
later went on to make the Kriola crayons. Something that's
kind of interesting about Bennie and Smith is that they
(04:13):
Harold and Edwin became this team and Binny was the
one who was really interested in the invention side, in
the kind of research and development, finding new applications for
the products that they made. And by nineteen eleven they
had decided that, you know, they could expand their business
(04:38):
in a way that was kind of unusual. They could
add lamp black to automobile tires and make them very durable.
Because before that the automobile tires were white. And I
think this is something we forget because all our tires
are now black. But by adding lamp black to the
automobile tire rubber, they made the tire is much more durable.
(05:01):
And of course this was an excellent part of their business.
It made them a lot of money and they made
an even better kind of tire and eventually they would
pay in the formula that meant they would add the
lampblack already to the liquid rubber and so the tires
were even better. So yeah, by nineteen hundred they invested
(05:25):
in a mill in eastern Pennsylvania, were quite near there
and that's where Creile is still based today. And the
mill that they bought there was used to grind up
scrap slate that they mined locally in the region's quarries,
and this allowed them to create one of their other
signature products, which was a superior kind of slate pencil.
(05:48):
So of course, back then school rooms mostly used chalk
and slate, but it was when they started to market
this slate pencil that they became aware of a whole
new market, and that was the educational market. And they
started talking to people who worked in schools, namely the
school teachers and school boards and people who worked in
the one room school rooms kept saying to them, we
(06:12):
need better materials for our students. And so as a
result of that, they invented another product that was very successful,
which was their anduseptic chalk, and this was a chalk
that was dustless.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And you're listening to Natasha Biebo, author of The Crayon Man,
tell the story of Edwin Binny and my goodness, it's
also the story of a family business. And so many
of our businesses, most of them in America, are family
owned businesses, and most of the big ones started as
family owned businesses. They keep the business going. The pigment
business make a lot of money by putting black pigment
(06:51):
into tires, making better tires and making black tires. And
then of course their introduction to schools and this thing
called Dustles's chalk. And you can see where this is headed.
Entrepreneurs looking for the next opening, the next invention. When
we come back, more of the story of crayons here
on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of
(07:29):
our American Stories. Every day we set out to tell
the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns
to big cities and from all walks of life doing
extraordinary things. But we truly can't do this show without you.
Our shows are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to our American Stories dot com and make a donation
(07:51):
to keep the stories coming. That's our American Stories dot com.
And we continue with our American Stories and the story
(08:13):
of Edwin Binnie and the creation of the Creola crayon.
When we left for the break, we just heard how
Binnie and his cousin se Harold Smith had taken over
Benny's father's pigment business, had invented something revolutionary in the
early nineteen hundreds that we rarely use today dustless chalk.
Back to Natasha Bibo with the rest of the story.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
So before then, the schoolrooms were filled with this dust
that went everywhere. I mean, if you were ever in
a school room that had a chalkboard, if your experience
was your chore was to beat the clean the dusty
chalk erasers, at the end of the day, you would
know that ky a lota dust comes from the chalkboard
(09:04):
in any case. So by nineteen oh two they'd invented
this kind of dustless chalk that was incredibly successful. Teachers
loved it, of course, and they took it to the
nineteen oh four World's Fair. It was held in Saint Louis,
which was an enormous fair where people came from all over.
(09:26):
It's probably the size of several football fields together. People
came from all over to see what was new, all
the new inventions, all the new gadgets, the new ways
of doing things. And I like to tell kids on
my school visits about some of the things that were
new at the World's Fair, which included nobody had ever
seen a hot dog or hamburger before then, or even
(09:50):
an X ray machine. And of course one of the
new things that Binnie and Smith were exhibiting, where there
was their dustless chalk and their Creola crayons, which by
then had been invented. And if you see pictures of
this World's Fario, see this enormous ferris wheel. That was
also a huge feed of engineering at this fair, and
(10:10):
they won a medal for their dustless chalk, and so
they put that metal on all their products because they
were good salesmen and they recognized the power of branding.
And something I find really interesting is that already then
they had their yellow and green look that you can
still see on the Krayola crans today. The Krylo crans
(10:35):
were invented partly because of this connection with the school
market and the fact that Edwin's wife, Alice, was a
school teacher. She was actually a very well educated lady.
She came did school in England, which was unusual for
some women at the time, and she was very passionate
(10:56):
about children's development, and she encouraged Edwin Binney to develop
the crayons because she felt like children should have access
to durable, brightly colored crayons to use in schools, and coincidentally,
around that time that they invented the Karyola crans, which
was in nineteen oh three, paper started to become more accessible,
(11:19):
so kids could actually keep their drawings rather than have
them on slate and chalkboards where they weren't, you know,
they had to be erased for the next lesson. So
what was the problem with the crayons at the time
was that artist creons were available, but they came from
Europe and they were extremely expensive. They weren't really something
(11:43):
that most children or even you know, families could access
because of the cost, and the other craons that were
available were very dull and not brightly colored. They broke easily,
they crumbled, and most importantly, they were toxic. They used
lots of toxic pigments and materials. Although I do say
(12:06):
to kids the crayons are non toxic. But having said that,
I wouldn't advise you to go and eat a whole
box of crayons necessarily. All it means is if you
eat a little bit, you know you're not gonna be poisoned.
But I think that awareness that materials could be made
safer for especially children who were accessing toys and materials,
(12:31):
was something that was new at the time, so Benny's
company had a big challenge ahead of them. Not only
did they want to make the crams affordable, but they
had to make them non toxic, and they also had
to make them durable because they were going to be
used by kids in schools. So they decided to try
(12:56):
to build on what they already did really well. They
had invented a kind of black crayon using their lamp
black pigments that was used for marking boxes and paper
products and crates and things like that, and they decided, well,
(13:17):
let's see if we can invent colored versions of these.
So they did a lot of experimenting to try to
figure out just the right formula, which is actually proprietory
to krayle Us, so nobody actually knows what the formula is,
but we do know that they used paraffin wax, and
they used pigments that were ground down from rocks and
(13:39):
minerals to get the bright colors, and we do know
that Binny was very passionate about, you know, trying to
invent these. So when Edwin Binny came home excited he'd
finally managed to invent the Kriola crayons he didn't know
what he should name them, or what he should call them,
(14:00):
and so Alice was the one who's credited with coming
up with the name, and she suggested that we should
have a made up name, and it should be cray
for a stick of chalk in French and ola for
the oleagenous, oily nature of the paraffin wax component that
(14:22):
the kreolas are made from. And so she created this
word crayola, and it stuck and people liked it, and
that's how it came to be called creola. He invented
them in nineteen oh three. They produced a box of
(14:45):
eight colors so red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown,
and black, and they were sold for only a nickel,
which was incredibly good value, and they did very well
as a result. And I think when Benny would have
been pretty proud that his inventions still being used by
(15:05):
children today. He was somebody who would always try to
look around him and see what was needed and listen
and try to innovate. So one other thing that is
important about Benny is that he was incredibly successful in
his business and they made a lot of money, but
(15:26):
he decided he would give it back to his community.
And he was a very generous person in that way,
quite visionary. He gave back to his company and his workers.
During the Great Depression when times were really difficult, most
of the Kriola Creon employees kept their jobs. He figured
(15:51):
out ways for them to work and they would label
and pack the crayons in different farms, and he got
the local farmers involved so that you know, they were
extra jobs. So yeah, So Krayola was invented in nineteen
(16:13):
oh three and we're many years later and krayolas are
still popular. They are one of the most iconic American toys,
one of the most recognized smells, and I imagine it's
one of those things where people remember the krayolas from
their childhood and want to share that with the children
(16:36):
who they know. I think it's it's really interesting that
the product is such good quality that it's still being
used today. It hasn't been super I mean, there are
obviously other generic brands and other kinds of crayons, but
the recognition and this is driven by an ethos set
(16:57):
very early on when Vinian Smith invented the Krales, which
was that they wanted to make art and creativity accessible
to everyone.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by
Robbie Davis, and a special thanks to Natasha Bibo, author
of The Crayon Man. The true story of the invention
of Crayola crayons, and it all began with Edwin's love
of the outdoors, which of course turned into his love
of color, and then, of course, like all entrepreneurs, solving
a problem. And to this day, there aren't many products
(17:35):
that are almost the same a century later and still
loved by this country. The iconic brand, the Crayola crayon
is one such item. The story of the invention of
the Crayola crayon here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories
to show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Americans over the century have been known for
our inventions, from the bifocals to the cottingen, from the
(00:32):
airplane to the iPhone. This country has produced creations that
make our lives better. But sometimes we invent things with recreation,
not productivity in mind. Natasha Bibo, author of The Crayon Man,
The true story of the invention of Crayola crayons is
here to tell us the story of Edwin Binney.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yes Binnie, who was the inventor of the Crayola craons
was the son of Joseph Binnie and he was educated
in England and Germany and came to America around eighteen
sixty and he settled in a place called Shrub Oak,
(01:19):
which is near Peakskill, New York, and there he started
a chemical works and began producing charcoal. Shortly afterwards, in
eighteen sixty seven, he decided to move to New York
City and set up as a distributor, and so he
started distributing his products, which were mainly lamp black paints
and imported colors. And Edwin Binnie was born in eighteen
(01:41):
sixty six, so just before he moved to New York City,
and already as a child, Edwin BINNI loved nature and
he was a strong swimmer, So he spent a lot
of time doing things like swimming, fishing, hunting, sailing, and
just generally loved being outside. That was something that people
(02:03):
hadn't really explored a lot, like why did he invent
the Krayola crayons, So it was the first clue in
my research. Some of his family members mentioned and in
the people who work for him mentioned how much he
loved color, and I think that love for color came
from his connection to nature. Once he had invented Krayola crans,
(02:27):
people did mention that he would bring colorful buquet of
flowers and fruits and vegetables from his garden into the
office to inspire people and also just because he loved
sharing that part of his life. So he was actually
quite well educated by those standards. I mean we're talking
(02:47):
late eighteen hundreds, So he studied in high school till
he was fifteen, and then like many young men, and
so he started working as a bookkeeper for his dad
in the Peakskill Chemical works, and by the age of
seventeen he was a traveling salesman for the company. And
his cousin C. Harold Smith, who's the co inventor and
(03:09):
founder of the company that created the Crayola crayons, he
came to work in the business also by about eighteen
seventy nine, and mister Binny, the Dad Joseph, he was
quite rigorous. He trained them into how to be really
good salesmen, and eventually they became responsible for the pigment business,
(03:29):
which is basically lamp black charcoal and red iron oxide,
which is that kind of reddish paint that you see
on the barns and lots of places around the US,
especially you know, rural places. And by eighteen eighty five,
Dad Joseph retired and he passed on the business to
(03:50):
Edwin and Harold. So by nineteen they were kind of
running their own business and they formed the partnership that
became bin and Smith, and this was the company that
later went on to make the Kriola crayons. Something that's
kind of interesting about Bennie and Smith is that they
(04:13):
Harold and Edwin became this team and Binny was the
one who was really interested in the invention side, in
the kind of research and development, finding new applications for
the products that they made. And by nineteen eleven they
had decided that, you know, they could expand their business
(04:38):
in a way that was kind of unusual. They could
add lamp black to automobile tires and make them very durable.
Because before that the automobile tires were white. And I
think this is something we forget because all our tires
are now black. But by adding lamp black to the
automobile tire rubber, they made the tire is much more durable.
(05:01):
And of course this was an excellent part of their business.
It made them a lot of money and they made
an even better kind of tire and eventually they would
pay in the formula that meant they would add the
lampblack already to the liquid rubber and so the tires
were even better. So yeah, by nineteen hundred they invested
(05:25):
in a mill in eastern Pennsylvania, were quite near there
and that's where Creile is still based today. And the
mill that they bought there was used to grind up
scrap slate that they mined locally in the region's quarries,
and this allowed them to create one of their other
signature products, which was a superior kind of slate pencil.
(05:48):
So of course, back then school rooms mostly used chalk
and slate, but it was when they started to market
this slate pencil that they became aware of a whole
new market, and that was the educational market. And they
started talking to people who worked in schools, namely the
school teachers and school boards and people who worked in
the one room school rooms kept saying to them, we
(06:12):
need better materials for our students. And so as a
result of that, they invented another product that was very successful,
which was their anduseptic chalk, and this was a chalk
that was dustless.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And you're listening to Natasha Biebo, author of The Crayon Man,
tell the story of Edwin Binny and my goodness, it's
also the story of a family business. And so many
of our businesses, most of them in America, are family
owned businesses, and most of the big ones started as
family owned businesses. They keep the business going. The pigment
business make a lot of money by putting black pigment
(06:51):
into tires, making better tires and making black tires. And
then of course their introduction to schools and this thing
called Dustles's chalk. And you can see where this is headed.
Entrepreneurs looking for the next opening, the next invention. When
we come back, more of the story of crayons here
on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of
(07:29):
our American Stories. Every day we set out to tell
the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns
to big cities and from all walks of life doing
extraordinary things. But we truly can't do this show without you.
Our shows are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to our American Stories dot com and make a donation
(07:51):
to keep the stories coming. That's our American Stories dot com.
And we continue with our American Stories and the story
(08:13):
of Edwin Binnie and the creation of the Creola crayon.
When we left for the break, we just heard how
Binnie and his cousin se Harold Smith had taken over
Benny's father's pigment business, had invented something revolutionary in the
early nineteen hundreds that we rarely use today dustless chalk.
Back to Natasha Bibo with the rest of the story.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
So before then, the schoolrooms were filled with this dust
that went everywhere. I mean, if you were ever in
a school room that had a chalkboard, if your experience
was your chore was to beat the clean the dusty
chalk erasers, at the end of the day, you would
know that ky a lota dust comes from the chalkboard
(09:04):
in any case. So by nineteen oh two they'd invented
this kind of dustless chalk that was incredibly successful. Teachers
loved it, of course, and they took it to the
nineteen oh four World's Fair. It was held in Saint Louis,
which was an enormous fair where people came from all over.
(09:26):
It's probably the size of several football fields together. People
came from all over to see what was new, all
the new inventions, all the new gadgets, the new ways
of doing things. And I like to tell kids on
my school visits about some of the things that were
new at the World's Fair, which included nobody had ever
seen a hot dog or hamburger before then, or even
(09:50):
an X ray machine. And of course one of the
new things that Binnie and Smith were exhibiting, where there
was their dustless chalk and their Creola crayons, which by
then had been invented. And if you see pictures of
this World's Fario, see this enormous ferris wheel. That was
also a huge feed of engineering at this fair, and
(10:10):
they won a medal for their dustless chalk, and so
they put that metal on all their products because they
were good salesmen and they recognized the power of branding.
And something I find really interesting is that already then
they had their yellow and green look that you can
still see on the Krayola crans today. The Krylo crans
(10:35):
were invented partly because of this connection with the school
market and the fact that Edwin's wife, Alice, was a
school teacher. She was actually a very well educated lady.
She came did school in England, which was unusual for
some women at the time, and she was very passionate
(10:56):
about children's development, and she encouraged Edwin Binney to develop
the crayons because she felt like children should have access
to durable, brightly colored crayons to use in schools, and coincidentally,
around that time that they invented the Karyola crans, which
was in nineteen oh three, paper started to become more accessible,
(11:19):
so kids could actually keep their drawings rather than have
them on slate and chalkboards where they weren't, you know,
they had to be erased for the next lesson. So
what was the problem with the crayons at the time
was that artist creons were available, but they came from
Europe and they were extremely expensive. They weren't really something
(11:43):
that most children or even you know, families could access
because of the cost, and the other craons that were
available were very dull and not brightly colored. They broke easily,
they crumbled, and most importantly, they were toxic. They used
lots of toxic pigments and materials. Although I do say
(12:06):
to kids the crayons are non toxic. But having said that,
I wouldn't advise you to go and eat a whole
box of crayons necessarily. All it means is if you
eat a little bit, you know you're not gonna be poisoned.
But I think that awareness that materials could be made
safer for especially children who were accessing toys and materials,
(12:31):
was something that was new at the time, so Benny's
company had a big challenge ahead of them. Not only
did they want to make the crams affordable, but they
had to make them non toxic, and they also had
to make them durable because they were going to be
used by kids in schools. So they decided to try
(12:56):
to build on what they already did really well. They
had invented a kind of black crayon using their lamp
black pigments that was used for marking boxes and paper
products and crates and things like that, and they decided, well,
(13:17):
let's see if we can invent colored versions of these.
So they did a lot of experimenting to try to
figure out just the right formula, which is actually proprietory
to krayle Us, so nobody actually knows what the formula is,
but we do know that they used paraffin wax, and
they used pigments that were ground down from rocks and
(13:39):
minerals to get the bright colors, and we do know
that Binny was very passionate about, you know, trying to
invent these. So when Edwin Binny came home excited he'd
finally managed to invent the Kriola crayons he didn't know
what he should name them, or what he should call them,
(14:00):
and so Alice was the one who's credited with coming
up with the name, and she suggested that we should
have a made up name, and it should be cray
for a stick of chalk in French and ola for
the oleagenous, oily nature of the paraffin wax component that
(14:22):
the kreolas are made from. And so she created this
word crayola, and it stuck and people liked it, and
that's how it came to be called creola. He invented
them in nineteen oh three. They produced a box of
(14:45):
eight colors so red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown,
and black, and they were sold for only a nickel,
which was incredibly good value, and they did very well
as a result. And I think when Benny would have
been pretty proud that his inventions still being used by
(15:05):
children today. He was somebody who would always try to
look around him and see what was needed and listen
and try to innovate. So one other thing that is
important about Benny is that he was incredibly successful in
his business and they made a lot of money, but
(15:26):
he decided he would give it back to his community.
And he was a very generous person in that way,
quite visionary. He gave back to his company and his workers.
During the Great Depression when times were really difficult, most
of the Kriola Creon employees kept their jobs. He figured
(15:51):
out ways for them to work and they would label
and pack the crayons in different farms, and he got
the local farmers involved so that you know, they were
extra jobs. So yeah, So Krayola was invented in nineteen
(16:13):
oh three and we're many years later and krayolas are
still popular. They are one of the most iconic American toys,
one of the most recognized smells, and I imagine it's
one of those things where people remember the krayolas from
their childhood and want to share that with the children
(16:36):
who they know. I think it's it's really interesting that
the product is such good quality that it's still being
used today. It hasn't been super I mean, there are
obviously other generic brands and other kinds of crayons, but
the recognition and this is driven by an ethos set
(16:57):
very early on when Vinian Smith invented the Krales, which
was that they wanted to make art and creativity accessible
to everyone.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by
Robbie Davis, and a special thanks to Natasha Bibo, author
of The Crayon Man. The true story of the invention
of Crayola crayons, and it all began with Edwin's love
of the outdoors, which of course turned into his love
of color, and then, of course, like all entrepreneurs, solving
a problem. And to this day, there aren't many products
(17:35):
that are almost the same a century later and still
loved by this country. The iconic brand, the Crayola crayon
is one such item. The story of the invention of
the Crayola crayon here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com