In 1890 the journal Review of Reviews, in its opening issue, promised its readers cross-continental ‘photophones’, which Roger Luckhurst in The Invention of Telepathy describes as “trains travelling at 300 miles per hour and telegraphing without wires – even telegraphic facsimile handwriting, tastes, and smells.” A little over a century later, photophones are part of our media landscape (although they are not trains) and can transmit handwriting (if you have a touchphone and stylus; or if you just photograph your handwriting and use MMS).

But maybe the past can guide us a little more into the future? For the noticeable omission in our slightly-differently-realised telegraphic/phonic media is the transmission of tastes and smells. Would seem a good project for Apple, no?