[kkg]

Few months back i was watching Dirty Jobs on Discovery. The host Mark was in cow slaughter house that day and was showing various processes and procedures. He was consisitently mentioning the stench there was inbearable. The visuals were quite graphic and they did blur out some of those. So we were able to see what was happening there but what about the smell?

That made me wonder is there any technology or medium by which smell can be transmitted over a distance? Like we have phones, now camera phones that can trnamit audio and sound but they do not transmit smell or stench on the other side.

I know in the above case of mine it was good that there isn't such technology but there can be many other beneficial aspects of this also. I urge fellow BHPians to give their inputs on this.


MODS: i am not sure that i have put this curosity of mine in the right section but i could not find any better place. Feel free to move it.

[srishiva]

There isn't one. Unless you can box it and send it in mail !

[Shan2nu]

That made me wonder is there any technology or medium by which smell can be transmitted over a distance? Like we have phones, now camera phones that can trnamit audio and sound but they do not transmit smell or stench on the other side.

Well, you cannot transfer the smell directly but its possible to have a camera which has a sensor that converts smell into codes which is then recieved by your tv that has a unit that will read these codes and recreate that smell, by mixing various chemicals.

It might also be possibe for movies to have these codes in the disc which the player can decode and create specific odours for various scenes.

It can be done coz i rem my chemistry teacher in school mixed some chemicals to create the smell of rotten eggs. LOL

PS : Dirty Jobs is the last programme i'd wanna watch with smell-tech.

Shan2nu

[Spitfire]

Originally Posted by Shan2nu

It can be done coz i rem my chemistry teacher in school once mixing some chemicals to create the smell of rotten eggs.

That must have been H2S.

[clevermax]

The question is good, but the situation when this thought occurred to you is little strange - you wanted to get the smell of a slaughter house?
I wish that this thought had occurred to you when they were showing some nice flowers or perfumes in the TVSN or something

[bj96]

Originally Posted by kkg

any technology or medium by which smell can be transmitted over a distance?

Assuming most smell (in air) is presence of some chemical in gaseous state, I think, a simple pipe with some force draft/pressure can carry this? E.g. CNG can be transported in pipelines and along goes the smell too

However, there are devices to detect the smell (chemicals) in air e.g. smoke detector, LPG leakage detector etc.

-BJ

PS: what I present above, does not transmit the smell per se but it can transmit the medium (air/gas) which carries smell. Thoughts welcome.

[kkg]

Shan2nu

Good to know that something like this exists. But the question is that can it be simplifed to incoporate into daily usage as with the case of phones, TVs, cameras tec.

[

quote=clevermax;1823537]The question is good, but the situation when this thought occurred to you is little strange - you wanted to get the smell of a slaughter house?

i agree. But i guess my mind works best in adversities.

[Guna]

One problem with recreating smell based on transitted signals unlike sound and visual is, you can't have fine control over it once it is emitted. You can switch it on, but you continue to get the smell even after the signal is switched off. So, you may have a situation where you are looking at a rose on the screen but the smell of the rose is contaminated by the dead rate you saw in the previous scene (sorry for bad example)

[rajb3125]

There was a company claiming a product called "DigiScents" back in 1999.

I remember there being a huge hype regarding stimulating smells back in 2003 regarding Artificial Nose. Idea being to reverse the process, so basically every person will be STIMULATED using electric signals. There has been some recent work, last time i read a publication on Artificial Nose was in 2008 and sensors were being produced in mass numbers but not sure what progress has happened in almost 2yrs.

Not sure when it will be cheap enough to be used in mass media.

[DueLLeR]

I used to wonder about this when I was a kid! And, eventually I made up an explanation. Out of our five senses - sight, hearing, speech, touch and smell, only the first three involve energy.

Law of Conservation of Energy states that "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be converted from one form to another. Total amount of energy in the universe always remains constant." Also, mass and energy are interconvertible.

Smell is not a form of energy and hence it cannot be converted from one form to another or be transmitted. It can be transported though, like all other states of matter - gas, liquid, and solid.

Cheers!
DueLLeR

[CPH]

I am glad that this is not possible at least in my time. Being a person with a vivid immagination I am thinking of the possible wider effects:

Newspaper head lines:

30 million Britons died in terrorist smell attack while watching theri favourite soap opera.

Prime minister murdered over the phone by a radical cell.

Bank robbers first phoned the bank to knock out staff before entering bank to serve themselves.

The only positive thing would be that the industries would have to design a smell firewall.

And sometimes I prefer not to know what the drunk caller just had before the call.

I prefer life without smell transponders.

[Gilead]

Originally Posted by Guna

One problem with recreating smell based on transitted signals unlike sound and visual is, you can't have fine control over it once it is emitted. You can switch it on, but you continue to get the smell even after the signal is switched off. So, you may have a situation where you are looking at a rose on the screen but the smell of the rose is contaminated by the dead rate you saw in the previous scene (sorry for bad example)

You first need to send a smell to 'neutralize' the dead rat smell. Sort of like sending an out of phase signal. And then send the rosy smell.

[vivekiny2k]

Originally Posted by DueLLeR

I used to wonder about this when I was a kid! And, eventually I made up an explanation. Out of our five senses - sight, hearing, speech, touch and smell, only the first three involve energy.

only first two, speech is not a sense, taste is.

If there was a way to program our brain to accept electrical stimuli to recognize a smell, it would be possible. But imagine what happens in case of a faulty transmission

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

only first two, speech is not a sense, taste is.

If there was a way to program our brain to accept electrical stimuli to recognize a smell, it would be possible. But imagine what happens in case of a faulty transmission

Then it will be a called a farty transmission

[rajb3125]

Originally Posted by DueLLeR

Smell is not a form of energy and hence it cannot be converted from one form to another or be transmitted. It can be transported though, like all other states of matter - gas, liquid, and solid.

Cheers!
DueLLeR

Well the smell we get comes from small particles floating in the air, albit very small these still have some mass. You said yourself mass and energy are interchangeable. So one can say Smell is a form of