Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 21, No. 7. June 11, 1958

[Introduction]

The inflamed brains of America's advertising industry have recently been investigating the old idea of scenting-up products to provide an olfactory catalyst for a sale. Using chemical scents they prompt pleasant mental associations in the customer's mind as he looks at the merchandise. Ads for frozen strawberries make people's mouths water by incorporating a synthetic chemical in the printing ink which gives off a delicious effluvia of the ripe fruit.

More and more U.S. food stores use chemically produced odours of fresh bread, peppermint, savoury cheese, ham, mince pies and fragrant tobacco. Even washing machines have been sold to the accompaniment of a small of fresh, crisp laundry.

Experiments are now in progress to "syncroscent" films. As the film unreels an operator presses the right buttons, spraying the audience with smells of sea-spray, new-mown hay, petrol fumes, and so on. More exotic scents will be cheaply synthesized, and Hollywood will try to associate various perfumes with its film stars. Thus the grim predictions of Huxley's Brave New World take shape as Monroe undulates into focus through a cloud of Chanel No. 5. We have the movies and the smellies. Aldous Huxley's feelies must be just around the corner, and if Hollywood is going to be really up-to-date and logical it will start installing its electromechanical equipment any time now.