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Smell Camera Snapshots Scents For the Future

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-smells dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Designer Amy Radcliffe has created an 'analog odor camera' that can be used to recreate a smell. From the article: 'When a smell source is placed under the device's glass cone, a pump extracts the smell via a plastic tube. After being drawn to Madeleine's main unit, the smell goes through a resin trap which absorbs the particles so molecular information can be recorded. That data is expressed in a graph-like formula, which essentially contains a fingerprint of the smell. In a special lab, that formula can then be inscribed on a bronze disk to artificially reproduce the smell. The smell can also be recreated in small vials.'"

11 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Cheap Perfume by Master+Moose · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I cannot see the big scent manufacturers liking this one. .

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    . . .gone when the morning comes
    1. Re:Cheap Perfume by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Funny

      no worries, the reproduced scent would be approximate. this has been tried before with collection of supposed "primary scents" but with little success when judged by real human noses.

        I predict a limited market for augmenting internet porn.

    2. Re:Cheap Perfume by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Informative

      the reaction is to several proteins found in peanuts, something that "smells like peanuts" but not containing specific allergens would not trigger immune reaction.

    3. Re:Cheap Perfume by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      similar proteins are found in two other plants, lupin (a legume) and Fenugreek (not a legume), and people with peanut allergies often react to those as well.

    4. Re:Cheap Perfume by davydagger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      goatse and tubgirl get a whole new dimension.

      the only people who will use this are trolls

    5. Re:Cheap Perfume by Razgorov+Prikazka · · Score: 3, Funny

      Why? Because someone scent you an email?

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  2. Moderator is drunk again by Princeofcups · · Score: 3, Funny

    "In a special lab, that formula can then be inscribed on a bronze disk to artificially reproduce the smell." What, is this from the Church of Mormon?

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    The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
    1. Re:Moderator is drunk again by icebike · · Score: 3, Funny

      Actually it said:

      In a special lab, that formula can then be inscribed on a bronze disk to artificially reproduce the smell. The smell can also be recreated in small vials.'"

      Neither of these sound optimum. What you would want is the building blocks of those scents stored in little plastic ink-jst like cartridges, each holding half a dozen or so different molecule mixtures. It would be vitally important to size these cartridges so that the most common components would be in the smallest cells, such that it would run out first, requiring you to buy the entire cartridge well before the rest of the compounds were exhausted, You also want to be sure it isn't refillable.

      Then you can almost give the smell generator away, and make a fortune selling smell-cartridges.
      This would allow you to sell the entire patent structure to HP, and retire on your profits, and thumb your noses (figuratively and literally) at the world by releasing the first Olfactory Goatse.

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      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  3. New perfume by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

    Chanel No. 0x05

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    Have gnu, will travel.
  4. Can't believe this made it past the editors by bshell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is vapourware. Perhaps pun intended. Imaginative, kind of, but such devices have been predicted since the early 1900s. Never comes to market. Why? Headspace analysis is super expensive. Even the right library of molecular signatures, which would be needed to interpret the output of the GC/Mass Spec is in the neighbourhood of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then you need a really good GC/Mass Spectrometer machine. Or at least a really good Gas Chromatograph. All this is very expensive, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars neighbourhood. And that's JUST TO FIND OUT WHAT MAY BE IN THE SMELL. Then you need a professional perfumer and a perfume house with thousands of fresh organic compounds available to reblend the smell. This is a million dollar project, or at the very least tens of thousands for each "photograph". Prohibitively expensive. I cannot believe a moderator let this one through at slashdot. Oh well.

    1. Re:Can't believe this made it past the editors by bshell · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Smell receptors are very similar to immune system receptors. They are designed to use combinatorics so that they can "identify" on the order of trillions of different shaped molecules. In fact they are designed to "detect" molecules that have never even been invented. The mathematics of smell combinatorics is what makes it (currently) an intractable problem. Also, I believe we only know what a few of the human smell receptors detect, in terms of molecular shape and smell. It's extremely difficult to conduct experiments on smell--i.e. on how smell receptors work--in human subjects. There are countless problems and this is why smell remains a mystery. This story is not about *science*. It's about an Art Project. As long as you treat the original post as a fanciful work of art, all is fine. As soon as you assume that anything like that can be created with present day technology you are off in dreamland.