ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Remember Scratch N' Sniff, paper you can smell? Or Smell-O-Vision, a technology that didn't quite catch on that was supposed to bring smell to movie audiences.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Or what about the Smell Master 3000 from the 1994 movie "Richie Rich"?
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SIEGEL: Well, now a company in Paris has developed a mobile phone that sends aromatic text messages. It's called the oPhone, O for olfactory. And the mastermind behind it...
DAVID EDWARDS: David Edwards. I'm the founder of the Laboretoire in Paris, and I'm a professor at the University of Harvard.
CORNISH: He and his students thought up a way to transmit all kinds of smells.
EDWARDS: Aromas that range from bread and flowers to the smell of Paris 300 years ago.
CORNISH: The aromas are pre-programmed into the oPhone. Type a message and you can attach a smell that you think relates. Someone with an oPhone on the receiving end will get a whiff.
SIEGEL: Why do this? Well, David Edwards says communication is just missing something without a smell.
EDWARDS: Clearly, a big difference between me saying to you the word croissant or even showing you a picture of a croissant and you smelling a croissant.
SIEGEL: Edwards says oPhones will be for sale later this year although you can't record your own smells yet.
EDWARDS: However, being able to transmit the aroma of what I'm experiencing through a kind of a camera is imaginable, and so I think that will be coming for sure.
SIEGEL: And he's working with businesses like coffee shops to make the oPhone part of the consumer experience.
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CORNISH: This is NPR News.