Where did crayons come from?

Where did crayons come from?
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia:

The history of crayons is not entirely clear. In the form we think of a crayon today, a combination of pigment and wax, the history is relatively short compared to its chalk and colored pencil cousins. But the word crayon goes back to 1644, a diminutive of the French word craie (chalk) and the Latin word creta (Earth).