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 can and we did. There were scent printer that can “download” scent from supported webpages and create it for the users as early as the 90s. It just didn’t sell well enough to be continued. I’m not sure if it can conveniently record any scent your want or not
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You don’t think we have recreated scents and tastes?
You CAN record what you can smell. It is easy. Just bring along a stack of plastic ziplock baggies. Catch the air in them. Then you can refer to them later a few times. Hopefully you labeled them.
It’s quite easy.
If anyone on here knew the answer to that, you wouldn’t be asking the question 👀. But go watch “Richie Rich” professor Keenbean whipped him up a SmellMaster 900. It smelled/identified what was inside of wrapped gifts, dynamite on his parents plane. It survived a plane crash too
Sents are chemicals.
You definitely can record them and reproduce them although chemical processes are industrial these days which ends up meaning it’s not that useful to make a scent detector/recorder specially for playback, because the only way to playback the scent, is a chemically based scent dispenser which requires the materials be manufactured safely and also wouldn’t be real time, or digitally send-able or copyable since they are a physical thing needing to be transported and stored reasonably.
We have scent dispensers, they usually dispense artificial or mixed natural scents, such as air fresheners, aroma therapy oils inside of diffusers, incents, candles and perfumes. And these are mass produced, to reproduce, scents safely and accurately. These scents are either directly extracts of the chemical scent and not exactly a recording. Or they can be more detected than recorded for analysis to be reproduced less expensively with counter parts.
Lastly, taking recording to mean digital media, scent as a media form is not very generalizable, the way 4D movies just shake you and get you wet, people experience various sensory preferences and sensitivities, usually enjoying most time to be scentless, especially when relaxing. This may or may not change, for example as virtual reality technology continues to mature like OP mentions consumer scent recorders for reminiscing could be popular
Scent is litterally stuff going up your nose and we cant really record everything that could go up your nose
I mean scented candles, soaps, and perfumes are kinda recorded smells that we can replay whenever we want.
Let’s say we have a device that can analyze air and record the proportion of molecules of everything mixed in that sample (these devices exist with limited functionality. We use them to detect gas leaks and concentration of toxic fumes)
But such device will not be able to recreate that scent, and would only give us percentages of different chemicals in the sample of air. We need something that can take those percentages and create an environment that replicates the one we measured.
This can be done easily with vision, as every possible color can be recreated using a combination of 3 LEDs: red, blue, and green.
Such is not the case for scent, as you will need a device to carry samples of every element and compound possible to be able to recreate a scent
Wait, no one told you about the smelloscope?
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