Oh, Japan. You’ll never cease coming up with the best stuff. Why, just last night I was regaling a friend about ‘head bath’, which is a bathtub. For the top of your head. It’s a hat, that– no, really, this exists. Don’t give me that lip. I’m not taking any guff today. Not from you. Guff-free Thursdays up in here.

Anyway, I guess I was talking about something. We’ll get back to head bath later; right now, let’s rap about Smell-O-Vision.

You may remember Smell-O-Vision – a technology from the 1960’s, Smell-O-Vision was a fad that was designed to release smells in sync with on-screen action. Of course, it didn’t exactly pan out. Smells lasted far too long, the machine was noisy, and it was kind of a mess.

But fast-forward a half-century, and researchers from Keio University in Tokyo have taken the first steps to making the Food Network that much more irresistible to would-be dieters.

“We are using the ink-jet printer’s ability to eject tiny pulses of material to achieve precise control,” says Dr Kenichi Okada of the modified Canon printer that is being used to conduct the tests. The printer releases pulses of scent that last only a split second, leaving fleeting aromas – just enough to get the point across, without bogging your nose down with overpowering stink.

The use of a printer gives way to another application, too – scents within printed pictures. We’re not talking scratch n’ sniff, we’re talking, like… pages that subtly smell like things without fighting each other for the arm rest.

I dunno about you, but this sounds pretty choice to me, if only as an oddity – not that I myself could ever enjoy it, because ironically, I have no sense of smell. So let me know how this turns out if and when it does, alright?

Oh, and here’s that link to head bath. And you thought I wouldn’t deliver.

Y’know, I Bet Sports Programming Would Die Off Altogether With This Tech

Ty Dunitz

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