Scentography is the technique of creating and storing odor by artificially recreating a smell using chemical and electronic means. DigiScents Inc was among the more recent pioneers of the technology, developing DigiScent (later iSmell) in 1999 as a device that would plug into a computer's

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

port and generate scents dependent on the online content being viewed. The company ceased trading in 2011. In 2013, Amy Radcliffe, a

Master's A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

student in the Textile Futures department of

Central Saint Martins Central Saint Martins is a public tertiary art school in London, England. It is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of shor ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

introduced a

prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototyp ...

of a desktop device to record aromas. For the project, she drew on

headspace technology Headspace technology is a technique developed in the 1980s to elucidate the odor compounds present in the air surrounding various objects. Usually the objects of interest are odoriferous objects such as plants, flowers and foods. Similar technique ...

pioneered in the 1980s by

Roman Kaiser Roman Kaiser (born in Kirchberg SG on 15 July 1945) is a Swiss fragrance chemist. Since 1968 he has been working at Givaudan, the world's largest company in the flavour and fragrance industry, where he analyzes and reconstitutes natural scents ...

to capture smells in the air around certain objects. Called the Madeleine, after the

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

episode from ''Remembrance of Things Past'', the device is a working prototype of a new kind of camera to record smell. It consists of a funnel to be placed over the object with the scent you wish to capture. This is attached to a pump that draws air into an odor trap made of a porous

polymer A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + ''-mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...

resin. According to Radcliffe, it can take from a few minutes to a whole day to capture the odour in liquid form, depending on its intensity. So far, several samples have been sent for analysis in a

gas chromatography–mass spectrometry Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is an analytical method that combines the features of gas-chromatography and mass spectrometry to identify different substances within a test sample. Applications of GC-MS include drug detection, fir ...

machine at a fragrance laboratory. In the scenario developed for the prototype, the Madeleine would be taken for local lab processing in a similar way to conventional photographic film. The device was exhibited during

Milan Fashion Week Milan Fashion Week ( it, Settimana della moda) is a clothing trade show held semi-annually in Milan, Italy. The autumn/winter event is held in February/March of each year, and the spring/summer event is held in September/October of each year. It ...

in April 2013.

References

External sources

Madeleine article on Big ThinkAmy Radcliffe website
{{Perfume Perfumery Olfaction Industrial design Emerging technologies

See also

References

External sources