Steak-Scented Billboard Entices Drivers

In addition to car exhaust and road grime, travelers along Highway 150 in North Carolina can now enjoy the smell of a barbecue thanks to a new billboard. The work of ScentAir, which provides custom scents for businesses, the advertisement for a local grocer emits the smell of charcoal and black pepper over the highway. "Marketing director Murray Dameron said the beef scent was emitted by a high-powered fan at the bottom of the billboard that blows air over cartridges loaded with BBQ fragrance oil. 'It smells like grilled meat with a nice pepper rub on it,' he explained."

A Scentsor?

[Izabael_DaJinn]

I always wondered why there can't be an electronic way to generate smells, such as how a speaker produces sounds. Is it theoretically possible to ever create a machine or device that can create a variety of scents based on some sort of scent-spectrum? Or are "cartridges loaded with BBQ fragrance oil" the best we'll ever do? (This is one of those questions I have always wondered but been afraid to ask!)

iza

EIR

[MightyMait]

Hmmm...I wonder if something like this requires an environmental impact report. Could those scents be toxic?

Re:A Scentsor?

[Shadow Wrought]

AFAIK, the easy part is generating the smell. The difficult part is how to move from one smell to another. Once the speakers stop, the sounds waves stop propogating almost immediately. But a smell will still be lingering. I believe they tried this with some movie houses back in the 50's (billed as Smell-O-Vision probably:-) and they just couldn't get one smell out of the theatre in time for the next one.

I'm also pretty sure I don't want to think about how some web sites would actually use such technology for generating a profit.

Re:A Scentsor?

[clone53421]

No more so than a printer has to synthesise arbitrary coloured dyes.

Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

As we all know, perceived taste is ~90% olfactory. If I sit under this billboard to eat a hamburger, will I be a pirate?

Re:A Scentsor?

[wjousts]

Producing a single smell (like steak) or a small number of smells is easy. Generating a system that would be flexible enough to cover a wide range of the "aroma space" is much more difficult. That aside, your point about lingering is also very true. It's pretty hard to suck the aroma back out of a space and there are problems with contamination as well (example, I was grilling over the weekend and the clothes I wore that day still smell like smoke).

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[lowrydr310]

I live near a facility that manufactures food flavorings and scented additives, most notably ALL the scented oils that are used in the production of a well-known national candle store. At times, depending on the temperature and density of air and the speed and direction of wind, the heavy combination of scents can linger. It's not too bad actually; it almost smells like incense, however I can see how some people could be irritated by it.

Re:A Scentsor?

[kno3]

you would be forever having to replace the chemicals because they have evaporated away.

I can't see that that would be a problem. Printer ink is volatile, but that has a reasonable shelf life. You just keep it in a closed container until it is actually needed. In fact, if you didn't do that then your "olfactometer" (surely it would be more a olfactoducer) would constantly be producing the biggest concoction of scents it could muster.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[StuartHankins]

I was told by several women that they didn't like Drakkar, Gio, Polo, Givenchy Pi, Joop, Oscar de la Renta, Quorum, Paloma's Minotaur, and Boss. At first I thought it was just the girl but it seems some actually prefer the cheap air-freshener scents. To prefer Bath and Body works or Old Spice / Coty / CK seems very alien to me. Maybe people are losing the ability to pick up some of the varied tones in these?

Re: Air Pollution

[meustrus]

I guess I won't be traveling through North Carolina then, because my wife is vegetarian and the smell of some meat is now disturbing to her. I'm told it's pretty universal for people who have not eaten meat in a long time to feel nauseous at the smell of strong meats like bacon or barbecue.

Re:A Scentsor?

[Anachragnome]

"Generating a system that would be flexible enough to cover a wide range of the "aroma space" is much more difficult."

Not at all. The big mall we have here in town manages numerous smells during all business hours. The clothing shops have leather scents wafting from them, the jewelry stores have rose scents and such, etc, etc. Every single store has SOME scent being pushed out the front door into the open areas of the mall. They simply have some periodic sprayer releasing canned scents into a fan duct above the doors. They've been doing it for at least the six years I've lived here.

It is also the reason I don't do ANY business there anymore.

I have a headache within 15 minutes of walking in the door of the mall. The problem is that they are not using actual components for smells, such as leather to produce the smell of leather, but rather some chemical composition that merely smells like leather. All of the smells are artificial and there is no regulation of the chemicals they are exposing all of the customers to. The companies that manufacture the scents are the only ones determining what is used and what isn't. Considering they do it for profit, I do not assume they are using known SAFE chemicals but rather chemicals that simply smell like what the customers want. I actually tried to find out what chemicals they use. The mall managers denied they used them at all, yet when I pointed out the clothing shop that smelled like leather but didn't sell a scrap of actual leather, I was told that the smells of the mall "mingle" and that it was probably from a different store.