Some Early Innovative Approaches

Nicholas' early experiments in 1914 were to produce a very impure form of aspirin crystals with intermixed liquor and purification appeared very difficult. However, he was happily joined by Harry W. Shmith, an industrial experimenter who carried through many of the tedious experiments attempting to refine the crystals, finally by solution and reprecipitation in ether. A pure aspirin was produced that more than met the purity requirements of the British Pharmacopoeia and the problem of marketing the product became one of producing a fine grain tablet.

Two additions to the firm helped ensure its continuity: one R. Rowson was a mechanical innovator and improvisor who extended the tablet manufacturing to meet a market that the second addition, George Davies, an aggressive marketing man, was about to capture. About this time the name was changed from Nicholas Aspirin to the now famous ASPRO and partly helped to overcome a smear campaign directed towards the firm in 1917. It was Davies' innovative marketing that heralded final success; he adopted the now classic three pronged attack of gift offer, a defined market area and hard-sell advertising. Free three-penny packets of Aspro tablets were distributed in different States one at a time; there was every confidence that the product was good, would relieve headaches and cold symptoms etc. and that once tried, would gain acceptance. By May 1919 monthly sales had topped £4000.

New faster tableting machines were, however, necessary and Rowson went to America and arranged purchase of the best and latest machines. While there, he heard of the Sanitape packaging press which had been invented to disperse seeds for farmers. The inventors were then experimenting with using the process for dispensing tablets; it was a process ahead of its time.

Rowson saw how the machine dispersed tablets one at a time on to a paper strip which was then folded over lengthwise totally enclosing the tablets. The paper was then folded again into a zig-zag and waxed over to preclude moisture, a necessary feature for Aspro. Apart from the protection given the tablets by Sanitape there was the sheer convenience, a few wrapped tablets could be broken off the zig-zag and slipped into pockets or purses. The Nicholases not only approved the recommendation to purchase by Rowson but negotiated exclusive rights to the Sanitape process.

About this time Rowson came up with an important invention of his own. The tablet making machines then in use required a coarse powder to operate effectively. For Aspro, this meant a granulating process involving ether, a liquid that produced good product but was expensive and dangerous to handle. Rowson discovered that by applying heavy hydraulic pressure to the powder, it turned into a solid cake which could be broken up and fed to tablet machines, eliminating the ether process.

Other technical advances were being pursued as, for example, into the drying of starch which was an ingredient of the tablet which allowed it to break up more easily when swallowed. It was also about this time that the name of the firm was changed from G. R. Nicholas & Co. to Nicholas Proprietary Limited whose modern history is better known.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering