Edwin Binney (November 24, 1866 – December 17, 1934) was an American entrepreneur and inventor, who created the first dustless white chalk, and along with his cousin C. Harold Smith (born London, 1860 - died, 1931), was the founder of handicrafts company

Binney & Smith Crayola LLC, formerly the Binney & Smith Company, is an American manufacturing and retail company specializing in list of art media, art supplies. It is known for its brand ''Crayola'' and best known for its crayons. The company is headquartered ...

, which marketed his invention of the

Crayola Crayola LLC, formerly the Binney & Smith Company, is an American manufacturing and retail company specializing in list of art media, art supplies. It is known for its brand ''Crayola'' and best known for its crayons. The company is headquartered ...

crayon A crayon (or wax pastel) is a stick of pigmented wax used for writing or drawing. Wax crayons differ from pastels, in which the pigment is mixed with a dry binder (material), binder such as gum arabic, and from oil pastels, where the binder is a ...

. The Binney family lived in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, as well as

Fort Pierce, Florida Fort Pierce is a city in and the county seat of St. Lucie County, Florida, United States. The city is part of the Treasure Coast region of Florida’s Atlantic Coast. It is also known as the Sunrise City. Per the 2020 census, the population w ...

Biography

Binney was born in Shrub Oak,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

. In 1885, he took control of his father's business, Peekskill Chemical Co. While experimenting with a mixture of

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

waste,

cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mi ...

, and

talc Talc, or talcum, is a clay mineral composed of hydrated magnesium silicate, with the chemical formula . Talc in powdered form, often combined with corn starch, is used as baby powder. This mineral is used as a thickening agent and lubricant ...

, Binney created the first dustless white chalk. The invention was awarded a gold medal at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. He co-founded the firm Binney & Smith, which in 1902 had created a new wax crayon used to mark crates and barrels, but it was loaded with

carbon black Carbon black (with subtypes acetylene black, channel black, furnace black, lamp black and thermal black) is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of coal tar, vegetable matter, or petroleum products, including fuel oil, fluid cataly ...

and too toxic for use by children. They were confident that the pigment and wax mixing techniques they had developed could be adapted to make safe wax crayons in a variety of colors. Binney also put forward the idea of black

tire A tire (North American English) or tyre (Commonwealth English) is a ring-shaped component that surrounds a Rim (wheel), wheel's rim to transfer a vehicle's load from the axle through the wheel to the ground and to provide Traction (engineeri ...

s, again using carbon black, which strengthens the rubber and makes it more thermally conductive. Binney produced the first box of "

" crayons in 1903. His wife, Alice Binney, created the

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

name of the brand by combining elements of two words: ''craie'' (French for ''chalk'') and ''ola'' for "oleaginous" (meaning "oily"), since the crayons were made using a petroleum-based wax. Around, Binney began spending more time in southeastern Florida, as he was an avid fisherman, and the family soon began to winter there after purchasing a large acreage north of the city of

. Binney was a community

activist Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

. He was responsible for Fort Pierce becoming a port city in 1921, funding a channel to be cut across Hutchinson Island. In 1929, he helped to keep the St. Lucie County Bank from succumbing to the poor economic conditions prevalent at that time.

Personal life

Binney was married to Alice Stead Binney (1866-1960), a London school teacher. Their land holding at Fort Pierce had been called Fort Pierce Farms, but Alice renamed it "Indrio", another portmanteau, from "Indian" (for the nearby Indian River) and ''rio'' (Spanish for ''river''). They had four children: Dorothy Binney, Helen Binney Kitchel, Mary, and Edwin Jr. Their daughter Helen became a four-time member of the Connecticut legislature. Their daughter Mary married a tree surgeon, James A.G. Davey. Their son, Edwin Jr, was an international swimmer and professor at Yale.Can you tell me the birth dates of the founders Edwin Binney and , crayola.co.uk
Retrieved 2014-09-30.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Binney, Edward 1866 births 1934 deaths American arts and crafts industry businesspeople 19th-century American inventors 20th-century American inventors Businesspeople from New York (state) Crayola People from Yorktown, New York Engineers from New York (state)