An odd chapter in the history of cinema
Two milestones are always cited when the history of cinema is told: the moving image at the end of the nineteenth century and synchronised sound in 1927 with The Jazz Singer. There is a third, far less well known, and it arrived before sound: the attempts to add smell to the auditorium.
1906: cotton wool, oil of roses and a fan
The first documented experiment is credited to Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel, in a picture house in Forest City, Pennsylvania. He soaked cotton wool in oil of roses and set it in front of a fan while a short film was screened. Primitive, but the idea was already complete: the film should smell too.
1959-1960: AromaRama versus Smell-O-Vision
The idea resurfaced half a century later, with two systems competing almost simultaneously. AromaRama injected the scents through the auditorium's air conditioning system. Smell-O-Vision released them from tubes fitted to the seats, synchronised with the action. Scent of Mystery was shot for the latter, with some thirty scents triggered at key moments in the story.
Why it failed
The idea did not fail, the execution did. The systems were slow and noisy, the smell did not reach every seat at the same time and, above all, there was no way of removing it: the scents built up in the auditorium and blended into one another. The reviews were withering and both systems disappeared within months.
That problem — how to put smell into a space without it building up or crossing over — is still the central problem of scenting, sixty years on. What has changed is the answer: instead of trying to synchronise different smells to the second, today we work with a stable fragrance, a fine particle and programmed cycles with pauses, which is precisely what prevents the saturation that sank Smell-O-Vision.
What survived of it all
Scented cinema never caught on, but the underlying idea did: that smell is part of the experience of a space and not an ornament. It is what hotels, shops and restaurants do today when they design their scent with the same intent they bring to choosing the music or the lighting.
If the practical side interests you, you can see our range in diffusers and fragrances, or read how the sense of smell works.
