New Technology TV

If Japanese engineers have their way, we may be stimulating more than our visual and auditory senses sometime in the future. The idea of combining video with specific smells that coincide with the subject of the movie or television show has long been sought by directors, scientists and filmmakers. The idea was immortalized by Aldous Huxley in his great novel Brave New World and was subsequently used by the late Mike Todd Jr. in the 1960’s. The process was designed to produce smells from under the theatergoer’s seats from a series of tubes. Common smells like coffee, cigar smoke, garlic, and onions were reproduced. Another film called, Beyond the Great Wall attempted to utilize this idea to only limited success. One of the main problems, other than convincing audiences that this smelly idea has much merit, is the clearing away of a smell, to make way for the next smell in the program or movie. Filling the air conditioning ducts with the appropriate odor was another technique that has been used by filmmakers. John Waters employed another ingenious and yet low-tech method—he distributed cards that were scratch-and-sniff, so the audience could encounter the smells at the proper time in the movie.

The idea has all but languished until now, revived by the Japanese who have the benefit of decades of technological advances. Now science comes to the rescue of this old idea by the creation of something called an odor recorder. It is a device that contains around 100 chemicals that are released to mimic the smells that the device was just exposed to. It can supposedly recreate wonderful aromas such as baking bread, and the all-American Apple Pie. But of course, it will be just as capable at reproducing the smell of rotten eggs (Hydrogen Sulfide), urine and other unsavory insults to the olfactory system. The odor reproducer has microchips that sense chemicals in the air and then goes about recreating the smell. The electronic smeller, so to speak, has sensed and faithfully reproduced certain fruit smells, such as apple, orange, and the tangy lemon. Apparently the incipient technology is already good enough to distinguish the difference between green and red apples! This new technology could be used in virtual reality applications, movies, television programs, Internet shopping and more. One can only hope that hackers don’t take control of these devices to play havoc with our working environments. A hijacked smell-o-vision is something to be feared. How long will it be until the HD (High Definition) Televisions are equipped with this new sensory technology? Certainly, it will probably take a few more years until the technology is ready for mass consumption, and then it will have to mount the even greater hurdle of widespread acceptance as something to welcome into our homes that are already inundated with various smells already. Oh, I have to go; I smell my favorite show coming on right now…