Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with RetroPod, a show about the past rediscovered.

In 1951, a man named Dan Robbins began working at Palmer Paint Company in Detroit.

He had just left the Army Signal Corps where he was a cartographer.

Now, instead of spending his days making maps, Robbins was learning to design children's coloring

books.

He was a real go-getter.

He wanted to take coloring to a whole new level.

So he went to the company's owner, Max Klein,

and proposed a product not for children, but for adults.

Instead of a coloring book,

Robin suggested a coloring canvas with pre-drawn lines.

It would look like a colorless stained glass window.

Each blank segment would contain a number corresponding to a capsule of paint included with the set.

Sound familiar?

It was an idea that eventually became a phenomenon for kids and adults alike.

Paint by number.

Robbins put together a prototype of his idea,

a canvas with a still life drawn on it,

called Abstract Number One.

He described the design as a mix of Picasso, Brock, and Robbins, which sounds interesting.

Klein immediately rejected it. He was a brusque boss who wasn't into abstract art.

Abstracts, he said, are for people who call themselves artists but can't paint worth a damn.

...