Mini-Stories: Volume 20

Happy New Year! We’re starting 2025 with four more mini stories! This week we have a sleepy button, electric signs, a very important sticker, and video you can smell. Let’s get into it!

Snooze Buttons

In the 1950s, General Electric changed alarm clocks forever by adding a snooze button. On top of the clock there was a big fat bar labeled “SNOOZE” and it could not be missed. One smack of the clock and presto, you just bought yourself a little more sleep.The first Snooz-Alarm clocks were built to let you snooze for 10-15 minutes. However, mass production required some standardization and in the 1950s a double digit snooze was too complicated to program into the gears of a clock at scale. So GE got as close as they could  with a nine minute snooze.After millennia of trying to get ourselves out of bed at a certain time, the Snooz-Alarm dared to ask – …do you really have to get up right now? And across the country people more or less said…no…I don’t. The clock was a major hit. And as the technology improved, a few competitors ended up offering alternatives to the nine minute snooze. Like the Westclox DROWSE alarm clock.

The Westclox alarm clock gave people the option of snoozing for 5 minutes or 10 depending on if you hit the DROWSE button on its left side or right side. But the DROWSE button didn’t have that sweet simplicity. Nobody wants to wake up and think about how much longer they want to sleep. People just want to sleep more. And the SNOOZ button gave us that. Or at least that’s what we thought. Despite the fact that many of our phones are still factory preset to snooze for 9 minutes – today we all know deep down that the snooze button doesn’t really give us meaningful sleep. And it also doesn’t let us rise. Instead it catches us at our weakest moment. When we are least capable of making decisions. When it’s far easier to slap a button than to put two feet on the ground. In the end, the key to waking up might just rest in not giving yourself any other options. And the key to more sleep? Who knows?!

Neon Signs with Kelly Prime

In the 1950s, a new and unique style of neon signage popped up across the Eastern Bloc. At the time, Eastern European countries were right in the middle of the cold war and people were starting to rebel. Soviet leadership needed a way to quell political unrest. What they landed on was a state-sponsored plan called neonization. The idea was to transform cities with neon lights, pushing the concept of (ahem) a brighter future and distracting people from the harsh realities of communism.

To achieve this, the government enlisted top artists, some unfamiliar with neon, to create large, imaginative designs. Examples included giant neon flowers decorating a flower shop and a pink mermaid symbolizing Warsaw’s public libraries. By the late 1960s, Warsaw was covered in neon, with signs designed to complement each other, creating a cohesive citywide aesthetic.

However, despite the beauty of the signs, Neonization did not fool the public into believing life under communism was sustainable. People continued to rebel. And after the fall of communism, the new democratic government actually paid people to remove the signs. Most of Warsaw’s cold war neons were lost during this period and the few remaining signs were turned off or broken. But in the past twenty years or so, Warsaw has experienced a neon renaissance, with new signs inspired by the original Cold War designs, revitalizing the city’s iconic neon aesthetic.

Japan Fire Stickers with Kurt Kohlstedt

High up and easy to miss if you’re not scouting for interesting architecture, there are equilateral triangles on building windows all over japan. The red triangle is a sticker indicating Fire Brigade Entrance (消防隊進入口) – It’s where firefighters know to lean their ladders and enter when rescuing people, and on the flip side it’s where people know to gather and expect rescue.According to the Building Standards Law of Japan (Article 126 No.6), the fire brigade entrance must be indicated on buildings lower than 31 meters, have three or more stories without balconies, nor large windows. These conditions have been defined to ensure emergency services for buildings lower than 31 meters, the maximum reachable height of the fire ladder. The inside of the sticker also carries an important message for occupants: don’t place things in front of this window! the last thing you want is to have to push and pull a huge copy machine out of the way to get to your rescue window. Like Knox boxes in America,  often found on the side of buildings and  containing emergency keys for firefighters, these triangles are everywhere, and once you start seeing them you won’t be able to stop.

Smell-O-Vision with Gillian Jacobs

In the 1960 film Scent of Mystery, audiences experienced an innovative but ultimately failed film gimmick called Smell-O-Vision. Actress and 99% Invisible contributor Gillian Jacobs explains the bizarre concept of Smell-O-Vision, which was the brainchild of Mike Todd Jr., the son of movie mogul Mike Todd Sr. (husband of Elizabeth Taylor). After his father’s death, Mike Jr. wanted to carry on his legacy of spectacle in cinema and invest in a sensory experience that would engage the sense of smell.Smell-O-Vision was based on a device called SmellBrain, invented by Austrian osmologist Hans Laube, which delivered scent cues to individual theater seats during a movie. The technology was designed to sync scents with specific scenes—such as perfume when a mysterious woman appeared on screen—creating a unique immersive experience for viewers. Scent of Mystery was the first (and only) film to use Smell-O-Vision, with the smell of perfume, flowers, and other elements enhancing the plot.

However, the technology faced multiple problems. Some smells were too strong, others came late, or not at all. There were only a few theaters equipped to show the film in full Smell-O-Vision, leading to its commercial failure. Despite its marketing hype, Smell-O-Vision quickly became a Hollywood joke.

Although Smell-O-Vision failed, the concept lingered. Other films like Polyester (1981) and Spy Kids 4 (2011) attempted similar “scratch-and-sniff” methods, and modern tech like iSmell and oPhone has tried to bring scent to digital experiences like video games. Despite these attempts, Smell-O-Vision remains a curiosity in cinema history, a quirky footnote in the pursuit of multi-sensory media.