Smell-o-vision now a reality

Filed in archive Gadgets , News on July 11, 2006

Freshly baked bread, herbs and spices, local fruits in season, grandmother's special beef stew - aren't those what people abroad miss most about home? I've read a lot of stories of people brought to tears with memories of smells from afar. If only smell could be bottled and transported, life would be much sweeter.

Well, it's not just a pipe dream anymore. Japanese scientists have successfully fabricated an instrument that could record odours then can re-create it in the future. Scientists at Japan's Tokyo Institue of Technology developed the device that "analyzes smells through 15 sensors, records the odor's recipe in digital format and then reproduces the scent by mixing 96 chemicals and vaporizing the result".

The gadget is expected to be useful for the food and fragrance industries but this early, personal applications are already anticipated. Just like the earliest computers, the odour recorder's setback is that it is too large to be transported. But I am optimistic that they'll develop its equivalent of the laptop in this lifetime. The inventors foresee it being incorporated into mobile phones.

As soon as it is mass produced, I bet food bloggers will be among the first to use it!