Book collectors who came of age during the 1970s and '80s, or who had children or grandchildren come of age during that era, probably recall purchasing not a few scratch n' sniff stickers. These often were given out by teachers as rewards for classroom work and the like, and they eventually became so popular that they were traded between children in much the same manner as baseball cards:
As explained by HowStuffWorks,
[t]he basic idea behind scratch-and-sniff [was] to take [an] aroma-generating chemical and encapsulate it in gelatin or plastic spheres that are incredibly small -- on the order of a few microns in diameter. When you scratch the sticker, you rupture some of these spheres and release the smell. The smell is essentially held in millions of tiny bottles, and you break a few of the bottles every time you scratch the sticker. The tiny bottles preserve the fragrance for years....
The type of paper that got impregnated with these tiny spheres made a big difference in how long a sticker might be expected to retain its smell. The matte papers that were used in the early years of the process retained the impregnated smells much longer than the glossy papers that were used later. Like coins and stamps, many of the stickers produced during this era are now highly collectible items in their own right.
The technology used for these stickers eventually came to be utilized elsewhere, most notably in advertising. Advertising inserts for perfume companies and the like remain a major use of this technology even today. Another major use of this technology will be found, as any parent knows, in children's books:
The first such books appeared in the early 1970s, and there have been a steady stream of such books ever since. Many of these books introdiuce children to some of the more enticing aromas they are likely to encounter in the world around them:
But not all such books are as pleasant. Oxford University Press, for example, published an especially collectible nine-volume set of such books in 1997-98 known collectively as Smelly Old History:
The problem with all such books is that they do not all manage to accurately capture particular types of scents. How accurately, for example, can impregnated strips of paper really capture the smell of Victorian London, as described by contemporary observers such as Henry Mayhew (here describing London's notorious Jacob's Island):
[t]he water was covered with scum almost like a cobweb, and prismatic with grease. In it floated large masses of rotting weed, and against the posts of the bridges were swollen carcases of dead animals, ready to burst with the gases of putrefaction. Along its shores were heaps of indescribable filth, the phosphoretted smell from which told you of the rotting fish there, while the oyster-shells were like pieces of slate from their coating of filth and mud. In some parts the fluid was as red as blood from the colouring matter that poured into it from the reeking leather dressers’ close by....
Assuming a mere piece of paper impregnated with mcirocapsules of fragrance could capture such a scene, would you want the book on your bookshelves...?!
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