Smell ya later: first ever transatlantic scent message sent from Paris to New York

When it comes to unlocking memories, it’s pretty difficult to beat smell. Walking past the kitchen of someone baking could, for instance, transport you right back to your childhood. Small wonder then that there have been so many attempts over the years to use smell as an additional way of conveying messages (with the most disastrous probably being Smell-O-Vision). Now though, it looks like we’ve reached a new frontier and can “send” smells to places on the other side of the world.

On Tuesday, an email message encoded with the scent of Paris wound its way across the Atlantic and landed in the inbox of a Harvard professor who was waiting in a basement room of New York’s American Museum of Natural History.

The message that was decoded in New York was a picture of a glass of champagne and a plate of macaroons and the smell on the other side was, by all accounts, muddled.

Nonetheless the technology that allowed the message to be sent and received is pretty innovative, if a little convoluted. Using an Instagram style app called oSnap, users can take a picture something and then tag a selection of accompanying smells before sending it off.

The message, called an onote, is then decoded using a device called an oPhone.

As David Edwards, the Harvard professor of idea translation who co-invented of the device with Rachel Field, a former Harvard student notes however, “when you play all three scents at once, it’s sometimes hard to determine what you’re smelling”.

Despite that possibility, Edwards is confident that the smells produced by the oPhone won’t bug anyone sitting near you.

“[The oPhone] produces just enough aroma that it’s your message, not your neighbor’s message,” he said. “It’s enough for a signal but it’s not anything more than that.”

If you’re keen to get your hands on the device, you’re unfortunately going to have wait a while. Right now it only exists in prototype form, although there is an Indiegogo campaign to get a full production run up and going.

If you happen to be in New York though, the technology will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History starting on 12 July and for three consecutive weekends thereafter.