Interesting idea

When in school i had had an idea of transferring smell from one place to another...The idea was use the smell molecules to drive a turbine to get an electric signalwhich can be transmitted to another place where it can be used to turn another fan to get back the smell !! Bad that i didnt apply for a patent :)

Recently when discussing with my frnd Akash, he told that it would be really nice if we could transfer smell over internet. Eg : If u are planning to buy a perfume, it wouldbe great to smell it before buying rather than falling for the pic of the perfume bottle of the lady advertising it. Obviously transferring smell has its disadvantages/ dangers also ... Imagine some one sending u an attachment with H2S smell :) or worse some terrorist sending a mass mail with poisonous gas

Anyway, looking at the bright side, lets see various options of implementing this:

1)One way would be to send the molecular structure of the smell from the server to the client and the client system having a smell synthesizer using this info to generate the smell molecules. I guess this idea is too far fetched or impractical
2)Another way would be to trigger smell sensation using some other sensations like sound or sight. Not very sure if this is possible. The reason i thought this is possible because most of the senses are kind of overlapping..eg..when u eat apple when having nose block...u dont get the full taste..
So if this is possible, the client user can use an earphone and when he clicks a perfume icon, a sound/image or a combo will be generated which will give him the smell sensation
3)The other way seems to be most possible way. It is to send electrical signals directly to brain ie, the user will have a head cap which will receive electric signals from the server side...These signals will create the necessary smell sensation...Like u get smells in dream without the molecules being present.

The last idea, ie, directly communicating with brain is being researched by scientists..Guess it has lot of possibilities...

You could even transmit touch and other sensations though internet...This might lead some one to strangle you through net :) We might get e-murder cases...Also the horror movie experiences will get much better...

Now the brain communication is such an interesting idea..that it deserves a look in another blog entry