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
Technically, we can. We can use sensors to record what aromatic compounds are in the air and in what concentrations. The problem is we have no good way to play that recording back. You would need a bank of hundreds or thousands of chemical samples that you could release in precise increments. That would be theoretically possible to do but practically impossible. A more practical application would be to engineer a fragrance that smells like a particular place or event and bottle it as a perfume or mix it into a candle.
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