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Frank Herbert's Odalarm - Scent-Based Alarm Clock Update
In his 1977 novel The Dosadi Experiment, Frank Herbert writes about the odalarm, an alarm clock that uses scent rather than sound:
And now, you can have one for your own home; Hakugen Online is selling an alarm clock that will wake you up with either of two scents:
"The odalarm awoke Jorj X. McKie with a whiff of lemon. For just an instant his mind played tricks on him. He thought he was on Tutalsee's gentle planetary ocean floating softly on his garlanded island." (More...)
"By the fact that the fragrance only of morning starts drifting from 30 minutes ago of the alarm, it is the necessity of the refreshing morning which arranges the environment which is suited for awaking. As for the fragrance refreshing of morning the perfume of the prejudice which is made to feel, 2 types of [untranslatable] and eucalyptus mint."
(Hakugen Online Scent Alarm Clock auto-translated by AltaVista.)
Update Apr-06-04: And now, the professional translation:
"This clock is essential to a refreshing morning. It begins emitting a fresh morning fragrance 30 minutes prior to the alarm to create an atmosphere ideally suited to waking. Two fragrances—lemon mint and eucalyptus mint—evoke a morning freshness."
It pays to get a professional translation. Given that smell is wired into our brains more completely (and on an older circuit) than sound or sight, this alarm should be highly effective.
(Thanks to engadget.com for the original story The Smell Alarm Clock.)
(Originally submitted 03/21/2004.)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/6/2004)
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