Impact of Olfaction on Information Recall: Perspectives from an Empirical Study

Olfaction And Audiovisual Content

The first recorded attempt of combining artificially generated smell with audiovisual content dates back to 1906 when an audience was sprayed with the scent of roses while watching the screening of the Rose Bowl football game (Longino in Kaye, 2001), however, there is no mention of what the audience reaction to this was. The next significant development in the use of scented media in the film industry happened in 1943 (Kiger & Smith, 2006; Smith & Kiger, 2006), when Hans Laube, who had earlier discovered a technique for removing odors from an enclosed place, such as an auditorium, was also able to reverse this process to release selected odors into similar places at specific times and durations. Using his newly discovered technology, and with the help of his colleague, Robert Barth, they produced a 35 minute ‘smell-o-drama’ movie called Mein Traum in which 35 different odors were released to accompany the drama presentation. However, the technology behind the production of the emitted smells enjoyed more success than the scented drama presentation itself, with the audience agreeing that while the smells emitted were promptly released and subsequently removed, they smelled fake. Nonetheless, it was the success of Laube’s technology for emitting smells that Michael Todd Jr was to rely on later in 1960 in his Smell-O-Vision Scent of Mystery film production (Kiger & Smith, 2006; Smith & Kiger, 2006).