Promicrol Experiences? Also, HEAP sulfate?

I was doing a bit of looking at the original Promicrol information on the web and wondered if anyone in here has had experience with it. I was also curious as to the original version's ingredient, (beta-hydroxyethyl) aminophenol sulphate (HEAP sulfate)? Was this strictly produced as a photographic developing agent or did it have other applications? Has anyone compared the original Promicrol with the version that followed after the HEAP sulfate was no longer produced?

I've not needed to worry too much about squeezing full emulsion speeds on my typical projects and now find that I need to. I was researching some places to start when running into some of these Promicrol related topics and it piqued my curiosity.

Agfa used this compound under the trade name Atomal. It would be rather unusual for a company to say that they were going to create a developer but they would first have to synthesize a new developing agent. However, this is not completely unheard of and has been done in the past to get around trademark limitations. But most developers use off the shelf chemicals. I would therefore suspect that originally there was some other use for this chemical. However, it eventually became an "orphan chemical" for which there was no other purpose except as a developing agent. At this point it was no longer economically feasible to continue producing it.

Calbe's A49 was originally the same as Agfa's Atomal. It was re-formulated and now uses one of the color developing agents as a replacement for Atomal. BTW, Agfa, rather confusingly, used the same name for the developing agent and the developer.