On Tuesday June 24, 2014, history was made as the first "scented messages" were exchanged between New York City and Paris. Champagne and macaroons were sent, and smelled, in each space at the same time. The revolutionary technology, dubbed the oPhone, is one of the first developed that transmits scents.
In conjunction with an iPhone app called oSnap, users can mix and match from 32 basic aromas, which produce almost 3,000,000 different, unique scents. “With oPhone, people will be able to share with anyone, anywhere, not just words, images and sounds, but sensory experiences itself," says Vapor Communications, the company behind the project, in a statement to The Financial Express. Users take a picture of what they are experiencing, and tag the picture with different scents, much like tagging someone's face in a picture on Facebook. Each scent lasts roughly 10 seconds, and if the user sends more than one scent at a time, they play consecutively to mix and enhance the experience.
While oPhones are only available to preorder through the Indiegogo campaign, the experience of an oPhone is available at The American Museum of Natural History in New York City for three weekends in July. Various cafes in Paris will also be displaying oPhones, reports NBC News.
More information can be obtained on the official oPhone website.