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Take Note: Writing Instrument Trivia!
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Pencils are designed to last. They can also erase loads of mistakes – five miles worth. A typical pencil can draw a line 35 miles long… the literary equivalent of 45,000 words!
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The coloring book industry has schoolteacher Mrs. Alice Stead Binney to thank for its popularity. Binney recognized children’s need to be creative, so she encouraged the invention of nontoxic crayons in a variety of colors. She also invented the name “Crayola®,” by cleverly joining of the French word “craie,” meaning chalk, with “ola,” from “oleaginous” (oily).
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Edwin Binney and Harold Smith didn’t settle for white. They went for the gold with their dustless chalk. Not only did this new-fangled product wow schoolteachers when it arrived on the market in the early 1900s, but it took a gold medal at the St. Louis World Expedition.
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New Yorkers know a good thing when they see it – and write with it. In 1945, the first ballpoint pens went on sale at Gimbels department store in New York City. The pens – all 10,000 of them – sold out within the day for $12.50 apiece.
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John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath in pencil. His work helped create a one-man boom in the writing instrument industry since he required up to 60 pencils a day to complete this book! Fortunately, there’s no shortage. Over 10 billion pencils are manufactured annually, two billion of them in the United States alone.
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