Digital Futures: iSmell

It has always been the case that people consuming media want to be immersed as much as possible in whatever form of entertainment they are using. In film, the addition of sound and colour made going to the cinema a much richer experience. These standards have improved with surround sound and sharper quality images, but there are still fundamental improvements that could be made. In 1960, Hans Laube's Smell-o-vision was the first attempt at including a third sense in the viewing experience, it didn't catch on. There was a much later attempt in 2001 called iSmell which used receptors and the equivilent of printers mixing 128 'Primary odours' to transform smells into data and then back into synthetic smells. It is not apparent why this technology has not progressed, perhaps it has limited appeal and the hardware is too expensive for domestic use. If it were still in play these days, perhaps users of Facebook might have their smell as well as their image available to download.