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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Glaxo
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Britain's leading pharmaceutical company, and one of the largest companies of any kind in the country. It derives from an export-import business set up in New Zealand in 1873 by Joseph Nathan (1835–1912), son of a London tailor. A London office was opened in 1876 and a UK company was formed in 1899. Dairy products made up a high proportion of the goods imported by the company to Britain, and the company's breakthrough was its purchase of a patent for producing powdered milk. Drying machines were installed in New Zealand, and in 1906 a new trade name, Glaxo, was registered in London; it copied the recent example of *Oxo, but with milk (galacticos is 'milky' in Greek) as its declared ingredient instead of beef.
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It was in the 1920s that Glaxo moved into chemicals, securing a licence to extract vitamin D from fish-liver oil. In its subsequent growth it absorbed several of Britain's oldest firms in this field; in 1958 it bought what is believed to be the oldest of all, Allen and Hanbury's (founded in London in 1715), and in 1963 it acquired J.F. Macfarlan, established in Edinburgh in 1780.
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