A QUEER KIND OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 280, 26 November 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

A QUEER KIND OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

You would never imagine that a smell could be photographed, but, believe it or not. smells have had their photographs taken! Recently their pictures were hung at the Royal Photographic Society's Exhibition in London.

Not only was the lily's smell there for all to see, but that of camphor, and other smells, were there as well.

Looking at the pictures of the smells, you would never guess what they were, but some very curious effects were obtained. In fact, they looked more like picture* of a whirlpool or volcanic crater than anything else.

So while the nose is only able to smell the camera has managed something far more wonderful. It lies reproduced it.

A scientist would tell you that how the nose smells is not wholly known, but he would explain that, so far as he knew, particles so tiny as to be invisible, are carried on air .currents - to the nerve endings in the nose. When they reach them the nerve carries the messages of the smell to the brain.

So sensitive are these nerve endings that they will carry the odour of a millionth of a grain of musk to the brain as a smell.

To M. Breitenbach, of Paris, we owe the wonder of seeing the photograph of smell, and this is how he achieves this great achievement: A sweet-smelling flower is placed in an enclosed cell, a few hundredth* of an inch above «. pool of clean mercury. The odorous tiny particles spread from the flower to the mercury. Now they would fall there unnoticcd because they are so smalr, but the mercury is covered with a thin layer of talc powder, and the millions of tiny smell particles form on the talc another layer, thinner than gossamer, but just enough to push aside tlw talc layer. That effect is photographed, and, as well as obtaining a picture of a smell, the actual weight, because of observation of the layeTS formed, can also be calculated. ' NIGHT. (By Peggy Marshall, Clifton, Whitaker , Place, Auckland.! She "throws her mantle of dark o'er the world, And silently steals away, The «tars peer down on a silent plane. Till dawn arrives with the day.