Random Note for WOTY 2014: #3

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

David Barnhart wrote:
> These aromas are pre-programmed into the oPhone device,
> which has four small fingernail-sized chips that act as "ink
> cartridges for aroma," Edwards says. Air flows through them
> in different ways to produce various smells. "You've
> Got Mail, And It Smells Like 18th-Century Paris,"
> All Things Considered on
> NPR [National Public Radio] (Google News), Jan. 27, 2014,
>
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/01/27/267166229/youve-got-ma
> il-and-it-smells-like-18th-century-paris

This product looks similar to the computerized odor generator iSmell
from DigiScents profiled back in 1999 in Wired magazine.

Periodical: Wired Magazine
Article Title: You've Got Smell!
Article Subtitle: DigiScent is here. If this technology takes off,
it's gonna launch the next Web revolution.
Article Author: Charles Platt
Date: November 1999
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/digiscent.html

[Begin excerpt]
Joel Lloyd Bellenson places a little ceramic bowl in front of me and
lifts its lid. "Before we begin," he says, "you need to clear your
nasal palate."

I peer into the bowl. "Coffee beans," explains Bellenson's partner,
Dexster Smith. "This is what they use in perfume stores. It's like the
reset button."

Dutifully, I reinitialize my nose by sniffing the beans. I'm preparing
for a sensory epiphany here, an epochal event in the history of art,
smell, and computation.
[End excerpt]

Garson

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