The inventions of Dimitri Dutruv pt.10

After having developed technology for converting sound to smell, Dutruv embarked on a more ambitious offshoot of the project.

Having converted sounds to smell, Dutruv was convinced that language, meaning and, eventually, words, could be converted into specific smells. To this end, while working on several other projects over a 3 year period, he developed a "smell dictionary", a collection of 35,000 words (with 35,000 meanings), encoded as a series of scents, recorded on specially-treated pages.

This photograph shows an early test version of the smell dictionary (with only 1,500 words), which Dutruv used to test different treatments for stopping different 'smell words' blending into each other. 
Some pages are still annotated (in conventional pen) with comments such as,
"Some spreading between 'goose' and 'gondola'. Distinct impression of a bird-shaped boat, similar to those found in some amusement parks formed. Interesting, but a failure to clearly communicate meaning."
Photograph by J Dueck.

 ©2013 James Mathurin