[WEB4LIB] Re: Scratch & Sniff Web sites

[John D. Moore]

I found a site that's already doing this:
 http://miaminewtimes.com/extra/dewey/objet28.html 
Observe the caveat at the bottom of the page: (May not be compatible with
some systems.)
I think this will only be at this site for this week. 
Doesn't anybody remember "Smellovision", which John Waters brought to
millions of Americans through the magic of Odorama in his magnum opus
"Polyester"?

At 07:50 AM 10/15/1999 -0700, you wrote:
>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:
>
>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."  

John D. Moore
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Library