Sort of like smell VR...

Imagine the smells of an old painting of a barber shop. Eventually, when their database of similar smells is online, it could guide people in purchasing colognes.

https://phys.org/news/2022-11-scents-his...ances.html

Then in the '80s I had the Infocom "Leather Goddesses of Phobos" text adventure game for my MacPlus.

[Image: leather1.jpg]

AND ... I still have the scratch & sniff card in my dresser somewhere.

[Image: sniffnscratch.jpg]

If I recall correctly, #4 smelled like dill pickle, so it was not as salacious as it looks.
Oh, hey, it's abandonware now. Get it in this collection at https://archive.org/details/ClassicTextA...mMacintosh
Or here: https://archive.org/details/lost-treasures-of-infocom

What did towns/cities smell like back when? With no proper way to get rid of waste... well, the consumption of food also means that it produces feces. Use your imagination as to the stench. Or drive through an agricultural town in West Germany 50 years ago. I don't know about today, but back then they'd collect the human waste for fertilizer and the stench was unmistakable.

I was going to see a waterfall in "wilderness" Maine years ago and reached a spot where the odor of human fecal matter was unmistakable. It wasn't terribly close by (I saw it) but the odor was off the chart in the middle of no where. Multiply that by many thousands. Off topic, but who defecates and doesn't bury it? The moral? If one goes into the forest assume bodily functions will happen and bring along an entrenching tool, aka tiny shovel. FWIW, this was uphill from a manmade impoundment that had a swim area and not far from the stream with the waterfall that ran into that manmade lake. I suppose some folks haven't changed much in the last hundred years.

The only thing that fills me with wonder is that disease wasn't more rampant back then with flies and people defecating upstream and people downstream drinking it. They just didn't know about bacteria and such.

In larger cities, before autos...Horses were the primary means of transport for goods and people. Most city streets reeked of horse s***, everywhere! The horses had "butt bags", but that only kept the streets cleaner. The bags still smelled. I suspect that everyone got used to it, and the smell was the equivalent of white noise in the nostrils. In the US, most of us are lucky to live in an environment with a minimum of disgusting smells all around us. I cannot say the same of many of the countries I have visited in my life.

What did towns/cities smell like back when? With no proper way to get rid of waste... well, the consumption of food also means that it produces feces. Use your imagination as to the stench. Or drive through an agricultural town in West Germany 50 years ago. I don't know about today, but back then they'd collect the human waste for fertilizer and the stench was unmistakable.

I was going to see a waterfall in "wilderness" Maine years ago and reached a spot where the odor of human fecal matter was unmistakable. It wasn't terribly close by (I saw it) but the odor was off the chart in the middle of no where. Multiply that by many thousands. Off topic, but who defecates and doesn't bury it? The moral? If one goes into the forest assume bodily functions will happen and bring along an entrenching tool, aka tiny shovel. FWIW, this was uphill from a manmade impoundment that had a swim area and not far from the stream with the waterfall that ran into that manmade lake. I suppose some folks haven't changed much in the last hundred years.

The only thing that fills me with wonder is that disease wasn't more rampant back then with flies and people defecating upstream and people downstream drinking it. They just didn't know about bacteria and such.

Disease was pretty rampant back then and low life expectancy.  Everything is better now for virtually everybody.  Back in 1985 I hiked the West Coast Trail which is a trail on the west coast of Vancouver Island that was originally created as a rescue trail for ships that wrecked off the coast.  It's about a week long hike on gorgeous coast line and through virgin coastal rain forrest. https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/bc/pacific...iv/SCO-WCT. It's become very popular so reservations are mandatory and numbers are controlled.  Like rafting through the Grand Canyon is.  Back in 1985 it wasn't as controlled.  The four of us did as much of the hiking as we could on the headlands at low tide and only went into the forrest when there was something to see or we had to because of high tides and impassable headlands.  Anyway, one morning after having spent a pleasant night sleeping on a beach lulled to sleep by the surf and the foghorn from the nearby lighthouse we hit a spot where we had to duck under the forrest canopy and get on the main trail.  The location we entered at was a natural stopping point for hikers base on distance and time.  We'd intentionally avoided it and stopped short at  better spot.  The previous night's occupants had all left the site by the time we got there and it took our eyes a little time to adjust to the gloom under the canopy after being in bright sunshine.  As our eyes adjusted, two things struck me - a smell of feces and a number of little white TP topped turd mounds scattered seemingly at random all over the campsite.  Who does that!?  Had they done it in the dark and not realized? Had they done it in daylight and squatted in sight of one another laughing about the "landmines" they were leaving for the next nights hikers??  I imagined being that hiker who maybe had to stretch out the day to get to that "campsite" and arriving in the dark and stepping (or worse) into those landmines and I was pretty angry.  Disgusting.