Today's Michael Berry Show is sponsored by crayons.

A crayon is a stick of pigment and wax used for writing or drawing.

Crayons are available in a wide range of prices and are pretty easy to work with.

They're less messy than most paints and markers.

Blount, which removes the risk of sharp points,

and they're typically non-toxic and available in a wide variety of colors.

These characteristics make them particularly good instruments for teaching small children to

draw.

Now the history of the crayon is not entirely clear.

The French word crayon originally meaning chalk pencil dates to around the 16th century and is derived

from the word craya, which means chalk, which comes from the Latin word crater or earth.

In 1902, Edwin Benny and see Herald Smith developed and introduced the marking crayon.

A year later in 1903, Benny's wife Alice, she wanted to get in on this action and she coined the name

Crayola by combining the French word for chalk, craya, with the first part of Oleaginous, another name

for the Paraffin wax used to make the crayon.

While there have been several crayon brands, the most recognizable brand was the Crayola Gold

Medal line in yellow boxes, which referred to the one the company earned during the March

1904 St. Louis World's Fair. They used that award to design a new line of

crayons featuring the metal on the front of their box. Initially they

developed and introduced the number 8

box of 8 assorted colors which became an immediate success. Now when I was in

school we thought we were in high cotton if mom got us at 64 count you know the one with a sharpener on the back

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