We have invented devices to record what we can see, and devices to record what we can hear.
Why haven’t we invented something to record what we can smell?
How would this work if we did?
\[When I am travelling I really wish I could record the way things smell, because smell is so strongly evocative of memories and sensations.\]
In: Technology
We *have*…
There are lots of devices that smell specific things like carbon monoxide, explosives, biological hazards and whatnot. There are also devices that can identify a wide range of chemicals.
The problem is not recording. The problem is *play back.*
Sound is really just vibrations in the air. Make something vibrate in the right pattern and you get the sound you want. Similarly every visible color can be produced by combining various amounts of red, green and blue light.
But each smell is a completely different chemical. The smell of coffee or vanilla can only be produced by coffee and vanilla. You can’t use “a bit of this and a bit of that” to fake it. So you would have to store some amount of countless chemicals inside the play back device. Each of these would need to be tracked and restocked like the worlds most annoying ink yet printer.
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