[WEB4LIB] Scratch & Sniff Web sites

[Gary E. Masters]

At 07:30 AM 10/15/1999 -0700, Roy Tennant wrote:
>Oh great. Just when you thought it was safe to go out with your browser,
>now this happens. It seems a company in California (where else?) is
>working on a method to transmit smells over the Internet. The idea is that
>you would have a device attached to your computer with a set of scented
>oils, and the instructions to generate the smell from this portable
>perfume factory would come streaming over the net while you were, say,
>visiting the web site of your local sewage treatment plant. Possibilities
>abound. For more (as if you haven't had enough), see the ZDNet article at:
>
>http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2354314,00.html
>
>Now what smell will *your* web site transmit?
>Roy
>
>

Roy:

Some time ago when I was in high school - they had a device that did this
for television.  I think it was in Popular Electronics or something like
that.  It heated tiny coils with odor elements on it.  The trick was to
combine smells to make other ones - much like the rgb of color television.
Signals hidden in the NTSC code would tell the box which elements to heat.
Later, of course, they had scratch n sniff cards at the movies.  I don't
see this as a really new idea, just a new application.  I wonder if once
they sent letters with a rack of bottles.  "As you read this paragraph -
open bottle 5."  

Regards,

Gary Masters