Business: Zeus

Five hundred milligrams of nicotine, if taken in one dose, are fatal. Anyone who smokes a package of cigarets a day breathes in 500 milligrams of nicotine every week. Whether this gradual dosage does harm may be debatable, but few are the smokers who would not leap at a chance to avoid nicotine as long as the method did not involve giving up smoking. On sale last week in United Cigar Stores, Liggett Drug Stores, Schulte Cigar Stores and many a hotel in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles was a device making such a boon to smokers available for the first time. So simple that it seems at first glance a quackery, the gadget has a pedigree weighty enough to soothe all such suspicions. Invented by Aluminum Co. of America, it is endorsed by the Mellon Institute and the Italian Government, and is sold by a corporation headed by Count Giuseppe Cippico.

Scion of an ancient Venetian family, suave, blond Count Cippico is a close friend of Arthur Davis, chairman of the board of Aluminum Co. of America. Both men are heavy smokers and some three years ago they got to discussing some means of eliminating nicotine. Mr. Davis thought of an aluminum holder with a filter of activated alumina, an absorbent much used in chemistry. This proved too expensive, but in the experiments Aluminum Co. Chemist R. B. Derr noticed that butts of the cigarets in contact with aluminum were always soggy and black with absorbed nicotine and tar. This was because tobacco is itself one of the best possible nicotine absorbers and because aluminum’s sensitivity to temperature makes it condense the fumes quickly. Chemist Derr tried using an ordinary cigaret as a filter. He found that smoking one cigaret through another as filter eliminated 70% of the nicotine content. Count Cippico suggested using two cigarets, found that this eliminated 90%. The figures were checked and corroborated by the Mellon Institute.

Aluminum Co. sold its patent on the process to Count Cippico, who set up Zeus Corp. to handle it. The name Zeus was chosen because it is pronounceable in every tongue (same reason Eastman chose the name Kodak). From a tiny office in Manhattan, Zeus Corp. six weeks ago began distributing black aluminum holders in several sizes at $1 and $2 each. By last week Zeus holders were selling like hot cakes. Most convincing evidence of the gadget’s merit lies in the using. Commented Esquire: “After you smoke a pack, take out the cigaret filter and be thankful that what you see is in the filter, not in you.”