Edwin Binney

American chemist

• Born: 1866
• Birthplace: Shrub Oak, New York
• Died: December 18, 1934
• Place of death: Greenwich, Connecticut

Binney’s first major invention was dustless chalk, and he developed several manufacturing processes for black carbon, but he is best remembered for his 1903 invention, along with his cousin C. Harold Smith, of Crayola brand crayons, which were marketed as a children’s toy.

Primary field: Chemistry

Primary inventions: Crayola crayons; dustless chalk

Early Life

Edwin Binney’s father, Joseph W. Binney, came to upstate New York from England in 1860. He started the Peekskill Chemical Works in Peekskill, New York, in 1864, two years before Edwin’s birth. The chemical company initially produced a hardwood charcoal and a black pigment called lampblack. The company moved to New York City in 1880, and Edwin joined the company, as did his cousin C. Harold Smith. Smith was born in London in 1860. Upon reaching adulthood, Smith immigrated to New Zealand, where he fell in love with a Maori woman and narrowly escaped death at the hands of her tribe. He decided the United States would be safer and moved to New York to join his extended family.

Joseph Binney retired from the business in 1885, and the two cousins changed the name of the company to Binney & Smith—a partnership that was eventually incorporated in 1902. The product line was expanded to include black shoe polish, ink, and chalk. Red paint, used to paint barns, was another early product. With the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania came a new type of petroleum-based black pigment, and the cousins took an active role in production and development of carbon black from natural gaswells. They even bought into some of the companies that produced the carbon black. This new pigment soon became the main ingredient in many of the company’s products. One of the products affected by the black pigment was the tire manufactured by B. F. Goodrich. Goodrich produced white rubber tires. (The color was caused by zinc oxide in the rubber compound.) When Goodrich used Binney & Smith pigment to expand its product line to include black tires, the company discovered that the black pigment not only changed the color of the product but also made it five times more durable. Soon after, white tires disappeared from America’s roadways. The growth of the tire business led Binney & Smith to other inventions, including a formula for putting black carbon into pellets to eliminate dust from the production process.

Binney and Smith made great partners. Binney was product- and finance-oriented, while Smith was a master salesman. Soon Smith had expanded the company’s customer base for black pigment worldwide, and the company prospered. The company’s headquarters were moved to Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1902 when the company incorporated. In 1900, the company had bought an old water-powered mill on Bushkill Creek near Easton and used it to grind up old slate from the region’s many slate quarries. The resulting product was a pencil of superior quality. This product led Binney & Smith into the education market—a market that was to make them famous. Meetings with school teachers convinced Binney of the need for a better quality of chalk and lower-priced crayons. This led to the invention of An-Du-Septic, a dustless chalk that was sturdier than traditional chalk. In 1904, Binney’s invention won a gold medal at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

Life’s Work

At about the same time that experiments were being conducted on dustless chalk, there was similar work being done on crayons. The first invention was a black wax crayon called Staonal (“stay on all”), named so because it would work on any type of surface; Staonal was designed as a marker for writing on boxes and barrels. The overnight success of Staonal led to experiments with other types of pigments to create colored wax crayons for use by schoolchildren. Artists already had access to imported crayons, but the cost of these tools was prohibitive for other than professional use. From the beginning, the concept was to use nontoxic pigments, since the end consumer was to be small children. Binney’s wife, Alice, was a former schoolteacher, and she took a special interest in the product. In fact, she is credited with creating the name “Crayola.” Teachers were already familiar with the company’s quality pencils and chalk, so the introduction of Crayola crayons was an overnight success.

By 1911, the company had become quite profitable and allowed Binney and his family to spend much time in St. Lucie County, Florida, where he owned over one thousand acres of citrus groves. The community was known then as Fort Pierce Farms. Binney was an avid sportsman and fisherman. He was also a community activist and contributed much to his adopted Florida home. In 1919, Binney advocated having Fort Pierce become a port city with an inlet to the Atlantic Ocean that would accommodate oceangoing vessels. Through his support, this was accomplished in 1922. In 1928, he contributed the funds to restore a bridge that linked the city with the nearby beach. When the Great Depression began in 1929, Binney put up his own money to keep the doors open at the St. Lucie County Bank. He also helped establish the local troop of Sea Scouts (a division of the Boy Scouts of America) and donated land that eventually became the Fort Pierce Coast Guard Station and the Pelican Yacht Club. Binney had four children: Edwin, Jr., Dorothy, Helen, and Mary. Although his son died at a young age, his namesake grandson, Edwin III, became a noted philanthropist in his own right.

Although Binney seemed happy in his life and career, such may not have been the case for his partner, Smith. In 1929, because he despised his fortune, Smith sponsored a contest, with a $1,000 prize, for the best idea as to how he could use his $10 million fortune for the good of humanity. The winning idea, submitted by a Columbia University psychology professor, was the creation of a C. Harold Smith Institute of Mental Hygiene. The institute never materialized. Smith died in 1931—three years before Binney. Both Binney and Smith were inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 2006.

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History Archives Center houses the Binney & Smith archival materials dealing with technology, inventions, and innovations. These archives include advertising materials, financial and sales records, and various research and development records. The company itself has been a subsidiary of privately owned Hallmark Cards, Inc., since 1984. In 2007, the company had over 2,600 employees.

Impact

The Crayola brand name of Binney & Smith has become one of the most recognizable and most respected brands in the world. The green-and-yellow box equates to fun in the minds of children everywhere. The company has always been known for colors—from red barns to black automobile tires—but the more than 120 different crayon colors has been the lasting legacy of Binney. One study claimed that the average child uses 730 crayons by his or her tenth birthday—thus making crayons one of the most often used products in the world. All of this has been accomplished with very little advertising; the product has sold itself. To this day, Crayola company executives will still sign official correspondence with a crayon. After all, crayons are the company’s franchise.

Bibliography

Gillis, Jennifer Blizin. Edwin Binney: The Founder of Crayola Crayons. Chicago: Heinemann, 2005. This is a thirty-two-page children’s book, but it is the only real biography on Binney that has been published.

Kitchel, Helen Binney. Memories. Greenwich, Conn.: n.p., 1978. This memoir by Binney’s daughter tells of her years growing up in Connecticut, which was near the New York office of her father’s company. Although the book does not deal with inventions, it gives background on Binney’s life.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. More Memories. Greenwich, Conn.: n.p., 1979. This memoir by Binney’s daughter expands her life story, including some travels with her father.

Mehegan, Sean. “Brand Builders: The Color of Money.” Brandweek, September 15, 1997, 22. Discusses the Crayola advertising, or the lack thereof, over the years. Much of the article deals with new videos and video games that the company was planning to introduce.

Petroski, Henry. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Although mostly about the history of pencils, this volume includes a section on the history of crayons. Includes bibliographical references and index.