History
The use of scents in conjunction with film dates back to 1906, before the introduction of sound. In this first instance, a 1958 issue of Film Daily claims that Samuel Roxy Rothafel of the Family Theatre in Forest City, Pennsylvania, placed a wad of cotton wool that had been soaked in rose oil in front of an electric fan during a newsreel about the Rose Bowl Game. However, between 1903 and 1915, there were no games held, so it is unknown what the newsreel was about, although the Rose Parade (which has been held annually since 1890) seems likely.
In 1929, during the showing of The Broadway Melody, a New York City theater sprayed perfume from the ceiling. Arthur Mayer installed an in-theater smell system in Paramount's Rialto Theater on Broadway in 1933, which he used to deliver odors during a film. However, it would take over an hour to clear the scents from the theater, and some smells would linger for days afterward. Further attempts with releasing scents timed to key points in a film happened at a Detroit, Michigan theater with The Sea Hawk and Boom Town.
All of these early attempts, however, were made by theater owners and not part of the films themselves. The audience could be distracted by the scents instead of focusing on what the film director intended. Furthermore, because of the size of the theaters, large amounts of perfume had to be released to reach all members of the audience. This caused another problem: The human nose has a difficult time transitioning between smells until the molecules that triggered one smell are completely cleared from the nose, and with that volume of perfume, the scents would mix, becoming muddled.
Walt Disney was the first filmmaker to explore the idea of actually including scents with his 1940 film Fantasia, but eventually decided against pursuing this for cost reasons.
General Electric developed a system in 1953 that they called Smell-O-Rama. They demonstrated its potential by exhibiting a three-dimensional image of a rose accompanied by floral scents.
Laube's technique, which he dubbed "Scentovision", was to connect pipes to individual seats in theaters, so that the timing and amount could be carefully controlled by the projectionist using a control board. He introduced this system during the 1939 New York World's Fair, soon after which all his equipment was seized by police "under the pretext that a similar, patented system already exists in the USA". The New York Times reported in 1943 that Scentovision "is said to have produced odors as quickly and easily as the soundtrack of a film produces sound", but Laube, a Swiss national, returned to Europe in 1946, unable to interest any film or television studios with his invention.
Read more about this topic: Smell-O-Vision
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