“Imagine being able to record a smell and play it back later, just as you can with sounds or images.
Engineers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan are building an odour recorder capable of doing just that. Simply point the gadget at a freshly baked cookie, for example, and it will analyse its odour and reproduce it for you using a host of non-toxic chemicals.” (New Scientist )
Previous aroma generators have been limited by the number of canned smells they are able to reproduce, but the new technique does away with pre-prepared smells and synthesizes each odor to order from a set of 96 odiferous ingredients. Of course, the greatest application of this work, if it proves successful, will be in subliminal (or not-so-subliminal) marketing.
