Paint by number

The kits were invented, developed and marketed in 1950 by Max S. Klein, an engineer and owner of the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit, Michigan, United States, and Dan Robbins, a commercial artist.

After several iterations of the product, the company in 1951 introduced the Craft Master brand, which went on to sell over 12 million kits.

Following the death of Max Klein in 1993, his daughter Jacquelyn Schiffman donated the Palmer Paint Co. archives to the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

In May 2011, Dan Robbins and Palmer Paint Products, Inc., together developed and brought to market a new 60th-anniversary paint-by-number set.

[5] This collectors set was created in memory of the survivors and those who had lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and depicts the Twin Towers standing in spirit across the Manhattan skyline.