The Magic of a Powerful Memory

By Chesley V. Young

Would you like to possess the power of great knowledge? When you follow the instructions in this book, you'll be able to use your "magic" memory to: Triple your reading speed and comprehension; Easily master high-speed mathematics; Memorize practically any essential on sight and repeat it word for word years later; Increase your vocabulary by 10 times; Get rid of absent-mindedness; Amaze your friends with memory stunts and games. ---and to it all in just a few minutes a day!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780883915585

Chesley V. Young

Chesley V. Young, a graduate of Columbia University Teachers College and the University of Arkansas, served as a Captain in the WAC during World War II, and taught in the New York City Schools for 9 years. A frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines, she is currently assembling the largest collection of books and material on the art of memory. She is co-author, with her husband, Dr. Morris Young, of How to Read Faster and Remember More, also published by Frederick Fell Publishers.

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INTRODUCTION

Memory.

There, in a single word, you have the vital factor in today’s complex world, an element that is increasing in importance with the expansion of its need and usage.

The reason that memory is so vital is because no other form of knowledge could exist without it. When primitive man drew three scratches in the sand to represent the numerals 1, 2 and 3 or fashioned a crude pointed arrow telling him in which direction to go, his effort would have been futile unless he had remembered what these symbols meant when he looked at them again.

Ancient forms of picture writing, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese characters which have survived to modern times, all formed associations that increased in intensity the more they were repeated, thus establishing familiarity as the basis of simple memory. This was evidenced in the development of spoken languages, which could be rattled off glibly by persons who knew them, yet would seem utter jargon even to intelligent strangers. Similarly, the formation of a written alphabet, with letters that could be built into words and sentences, served as a common code to those familiar with their structure, yet left would-be readers totally nonplussed.

All this, in effect, was a form of memory training in which attention was focused on a simple item, which was repeated over and over, until it was firmly fixed in mind; then others were added in the same way, until they became a part of everyday living, so commonplace that none could be forgotten. That slow-building process was not sufficient. Something spontaneous was needed to expand ideas before they were treated automatically; and that was where systematic memory entered the picture.

Though use of memory devices dates back to ancient times, the science of Mnemonics, by which it is generally known, has only recently come into its own on a widespread scale. Its very-name is derived from Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of Memory, whose daughters, the nine Muses, presided individually over the arts and sciences, particularly poetry, drama, songs, and dancing of various types, as well as history, astronomy and forms of literature, while including memory of such subjects. Skill or progress in such fields were apt to be regarded as divinely inspired, and an exceptional memory was considered a great gift, regardless of whether it came naturally or depended upon some system.

Mnemonic devices were therefore popular among ancient Greek philosophers, as reference to Plato and Aristotle will show. A few centuries later, the Romans gave it a still more practical application under the head of artificial memory, whereby orators, most notably Cicero, used memory devices to link the keynotes of a speech with the surroundings in which it was rehearsed so it could later be reproduced in its entirety through a direct process of imagery.

During the prolonged decline of the Roman Empire, this Topical Method, as it is known today, faded into almost complete obscurity. When it was revived toward the end of the Middle Ages, it had regained so much of its original mystique that persons performing feats of memory were sometimes accused of sorcery. Gradually, that view changed and with the advance of scientific learning, the Roman technique regained its former status, only to be supplemented by a variety of mnemonic systems, many being abandoned at intervals because of their own complexities.

By the year 1900, preference was being given to systems based on laws of association, with particular emphasis on two key factors: attention and repetition. In purpose, however, modern mnemonics still adhered to the ancient pattern. Where the Greeks had applied it to philosophy and the Romans had utilized it in oratory, European and American practitioners of the art of memory broadened it to include other fields of learning. Devices were utilized to remember historical dates, geographical facts, as well as foreign words and phrases.

The Topical Method was as effective as ever, but lesser devices had been expanded and newer systems had been designed to increase its scope. Considered in terms of Greco-Roman mythology, modern memory experts had the Nine Muses working overtime, covering practically all the arts and sciences over which they had presided, and including many that even their mother had never heard about. There were many things, too, that the memory experts of the early 1900s had not anticipated, with one possible exception.

As the tempo of life sped faster with the advent of the automotive age, emphasis on classical learning gave way to instruction in practical subjects, making memory training increasingly essential to everyday life. In surveying this changing scene, an authority on mnemonics, John Malcolm Mitchell, emphasized that mechanical memory, based upon the psychological factors of attention and repetition, demanded judicious selection and coordination of any memory device in order to make it effective.

With history in the making during two World Wars and the hectic periods before, between, and after, historical dates themselves became outdated, and still more practical uses for memory devices were required. The judicious selection that Mitchell had foreseen and advocated became a reality, not just as a matter of choice, but of necessity, requiring newer types of mnemonics to fill whatever needs arose. All these could be cued in a single word: Interest. That becomes the key factor which links the time-honored elements of attention and repetition; in fact, interest serves as the capstone, for unless attention can rouse interest in a subject, repetition becomes unnecessary.

Attention—-Interest—Repetition.

Note that the initial letters of those three words spell a single word in themselves: AIR. This is termed an acronym, a word which serves as a memory device in its own right. In this case, the capitalized word AIR brings to mind the AIR formula, instantly reminding you that attention, interest, and repetition are the prime requisites of memory coordination. This not only updates the memory systems of the past; it provides a working pattern for the mnemonics of the future.

In the pages of this volume, you will find the first definitive, detailed description of the unique AIR Formula, which marks a new era in the field of memory expansion, enabling you to focus your attention on whatever interests can best be furthered through continued repetition.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

How to Read Faster and Remember More,

Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc.

CHAPTER 1

Your Natural Memory File of Life Experience: Make it Work!

Importance of Memory to Success

In today’s complex world of finance and progress, nearly everyone will agree with the statement: Success is spelled with dollars and cents. Even if you don’t agree, you will recognize it as the all-pervading formula and therefore something to be noted and remembered. So visualize the word like this:

$ U ¢  ¢ E $ $

There it is, Success spelled with dollars and cents. Will you ever forget it? You won’t, because you can’t. You will never again think of success, without including dollars and cents. Try and forget it; you just can’t. The more that you try to dismiss that notion from your mind, the more strongly it will crop up.

This, of course, is a very exaggerated example, but it has been selected for that very reason; namely, to show how far some oddity in word formation can be carried. By backtracking to the simplest of such mental tabs, you will find that you have a whole multitude already at your disposal and that more will crop up, the more you look for them. As you proceed, you will be able to form your own tabs, sometimes automatically, which is all the better.

This is not confined to word formation. Whole systems of philosophy have been founded on aphorisms, where a truth is conveyed in a word or sentence for the mind to retain it. Empires have grown from the general acceptance of such phrases as Go West, young man. Big businesses have won public confidence through the slogan, The customer is always right, which is something that every customer likes to remember.

The Value of Such Memory Tabs

A well-tabbed memory file can deliver whatever information you want, instantly. Once an idea is so firmly fixed that it can spring to mind on call, it can also rouse a whole chain of recollections, thereby increasing its value as a memory tab. The same rules that applied in the past are just as important at present and will be still more valuable in the future, which is why they should be put to use by everyone.

Back in 400 B. C., Hippocrates, the father of medicine used aphorisms to express his findings, so that the summaries of his observations and deductions would be available to his followers in terse, pointed, easily remembered form. The so-called Hippocratic Oath to which modern medical students subscribe, forms a logical sequence of ideas which may be classed as memory links in themselves.

Among modern sages, Benjamin Franklin used dozens of proverbs to drive home rules and precepts. Many of these are still quoted in their capsule form and are as all-inclusive now as they were back then. But Franklin did not stop with that. He raised the value of memory tabs to a far greater degree.

In his Autobiography, Franklin tells how he read an article from a volume of the Spectator, then laid the book aside, made some notes on the subject and a few days later, tried to reconstruct the original article in his own words. That done, he compared his copy with the original and corrected any faults. Franklin did this with article after article and as he became more proficient, he scrambled his notes and tried to allocate them later.

Not only did Franklin’s tabs prove their worth, but he discovered that his own vocabulary was quite limited. To expand it, he adopted the ingenious procedure of putting some of the articles into verse, because that forced him to find or think of words that would fit the meter and the rhyme. Such words in their turn became memory tabs, improving his literary ability all the more.

Among simple, direct memory tabs are quotations from the Bible, in which a person cites book, chapter, and verse, along with the actual wording of the passage. This not only allows anyone hearing the quotation to look it up and verify it, but also the person reciting the verses can check back at intervals and refresh his memory of those passages. This accounts for the remarkable range that some gospel students have acquired.

Historians use dates as memory tabs in much the same way. So do biographical writers, who can outline the entire careers of famous men and women by simply linking the dates of their birth and death with other events of the same period. These adjuncts aid lawyers, bankers, brokers, and persons in many other walks of life. Once they recognize the rules of their profession or trade, they remember them and thereby follow them, with cumulative results.

Forming Your Own Memory File

and Using It to Advantage

Analyze the average person’s memory file and you will find that it is mostly hit or miss. If it falls into some special category, like those already listed, it is good, so far as it goes, yet you may find such people woefully lacking in their recollection of things outside their own range or immediate needs.

As a prime example, consider a storekeeper who has a string of steady customers and is anxious to gain new ones. He is apt to know all the regulars by name, as well as knowing what they want, the moment they come into the store. Often, he may lay aside some new item, thinking it will please Mr. So and So, and usually, it does. He may add newcomers to his mental list after their first few visits, with very much the same result.

Restaurant owners, bank tellers, and many others who have continued contact with a great many people frequently display a seemingly remarkable ability at remembering names and faces. Yet they are apt to be just as forgetful as anybody else where other matters are concerned. If you tell these persons that they are using a memory system, they generally won’t believe it. They may even take the attitude that it’s their business to remember such things, otherwise they wouldn’t be in that business.

Also, they are apt to ask: If a system is involved, why shouldn’t it work with other things as well?

The answer is, it will, if you start with whatever you can remember easily or naturally, then look for helpful tabs. From those, you can form your own memory file, adding new tabs as you proceed, giving them various colors, so to speak, to distinguish them from one another. As with any standard filing system, there should be heads and subheads, with cross-indexing as needed. These are the keys which you remember to unlock a whole treasure chest of facts with which they are associated.

Recognizing the Potential of a Well-Kept Memory File

To develop any mental faculty, a positive approach is essential. As with the business slogan, We didn’t get big by thinking small, you can’t build a mighty memory by insisting that you have no memory whatever. When people say, I forget everything, try quizzing them on odd subjects with which they should be familiar, and they themselves may be utterly amazed by how much they do remember. It just happens that their files are cluttered with useless data, waiting for someone like you to provide the tabs that they should have supplied for themselves.

Here is an example of such inadequate tabbing:

Marcia Wilet regarded herself as the most forgetful of all persons, so her life was filled with apologies on that score. One night she went to a party and the next day, she called up several of her friends and asked these questions:

(1)   Tell me, Julia, who was that young man you introduced to me last night? The one you met in Miami?

(2)   Please, Peggy, what was the name of that shop where you bought the charm bracelet for your niece, Louise?

(3)   Give me your new address again, Helen. I was sure I’d remember it, but I forget everything—

(4)   Jane, did you say Anne’s baby was a boy or a girl?

(5)   You said four ounces of chocolate, two cups of sugar, three-quarters of a cup of milk, but really, Grace, I can’t remember when you said to add the two tablespoons of butter!

All of Marcia’s friends agreed that she was the most forgetful person they had ever met. Yet far from being a horrible example, she really deserved a high rating. She remembered five different subjects that she had discussed with each friend, along with other persons and places involved, including a recipe for fudge; but she nullified all those recollections by missing out on the very points she wanted to remember.

Her problem: No tabs. Or if she did have any, they were all one color. If she had concentrated on the answers and found some way to peg them, she would not have had to revert to the very same questions when she called up her friends the next day. What was worse, after Marcia heard the answers for the second time, she again forgot them, because she once more failed to tab them.

If she had tabbed them at the start, concentrating upon her objective and ignoring lesser small talk,she would have had the answers the night before. Instead of calling her friends and asking them to tell her what she should have remembered, she might have met them afterward and thanked them for the information they had given her, much to their surprise, because by then, they would have forgotten all about it.

How to File the Right Way: The A I R Formula

All this resolves itself into one simple answer where natural memory is concerned. It must be related to its component elements, just as H2O is the chemical term for water. But memory, being more variable and more volatile, is more akin to the atmosphere, which consists mostly of nitrogen, oxygen and other gases that are not combined chemically but retain their own characteristic properties.

This analogy is especially appropriate because the word A I R is the key to the elements affecting memory itself, namely:

A represents the element of Attention

I represents the element of Interest

R represents the element of Repetition

With any occupation, profession, enterprise, or even a hobby or a social gathering, a person remembers essential facts as naturally as breathing the surrounding air. He must give Attention to the subject, which is natural enough, because it is important to him. He must show Interest in it, or it would be discarded as something too trivial to be remembered. Finally, by weighing the facts thus accepted, Repetition fixes them firmly in mind.

How far can this formula be carried?

Very far.

There is an old story of a strong man who was able to lift a baby elephant. So he practiced the stunt regularly every day and, finding no appreciable difference, he decided quite logically that if he kept on, he would eventually be able to perform the unheard-of feat of lifting a full-grown elephant!

A ridiculous notion, considered within physical limitations, but in the mental realm, particularly with memory, the situation changes. Your immediate memory depends upon how much attention you give a subject, how much interest it generates in your mind and how much repetition you require to retain it. Properly tabbed, it will stay. Other facts may then be memorized by the same process without interfering with those that were acquired earlier.

Historic Cases of Amazing Memory:

Lightning Calculators

The formula A I R, as given, applies not only to normal memory, but to cases where memory may be regarded as a special faculty in itself. History is replete with instances of persons whose memories were amazing on two counts: First, the early age at which they were developed; second, the fantastic degree that they attained.

Of primary interest are the calculating boys, whose exploits have been recorded over a period of some three centuries, though isolated instances were noted long before. Heading the modern list is Jedediah Buxton, who was born at Elmton in Derbyshire, England about the year 1707. He came from an intelligent and well-educated family, but Jedediah himself never learned to read or write and was a decidedly backward child at the age of twelve, when he began astonishing the villagers by his uncanny ability with figures.

Having no formal training in mathematics, Buxton evolved his own peculiar system which always came out right. He could walk over a field and calculate its area not only in acres, but in square inches; and he was hired to survey the entire township in that manner. In answering complicated problems by sheer mental calculation, Buxton’s usual reward was free beer at the local tavern and shortly before his death in 1772, he calculated the exact number of glasses that he had earned in his lifetime.

The career of Zerah Colburn, of Cabot, Vermont, was shorter but more spectacular. At the age of six, he could recite the multiplication table so far beyond normal schoolboy limits, that his father, a local carpenter, took him on tour through the Eastern states and later abroad. One of his advertised feats was to take a number of six or seven figures and mentally determine all the factors of which it was composed.

In England in 1818, Zerah was matched against a Devonshire lad of his own age, George Parker Bidder, who could mentally divide a number like 468,592,413,563 by 9076, coming up with the answer, 51,629,838 +, in less than a minute. Honors were equally divided; but oddly, Colburn’s ability faded in his early twenties and he became a teacher of languages at Norwich University in Vermont, where he died when he was only thirty-five. Bidder, however, remained a lightning calculator until his death at the age of seventy-two, and his son inherited his ability, being known as the Younger Bidder.

Diversified Instances of Remarkable Memories

In contrast to lightning calculators, there are many cases where intellectual achievements have been furthered by prodigious memories at an early age. Most remarkable was Christian Friedrich Heinecken, born in Lubeck, Germany in 1721. He could recite from the Bible at the age of one; was familiar with all of it at two; and at three could speak both Latin and French. At four, he became ill and predicted his own death which occurred in 1725. During his brief lifetime, the famous Infant of Lubeck faced competition from a French wonder child, Jean Louis Cardiac, who was born in 1719 and died in 1726, outlasting the Lubeck prodigy by only one year. Jean Louis could repeat the alphabet when three months old. At three years, he could read Latin and at four could translate it into both French and English. He learned to read Greek and Hebrew at the age of six; and at seven, he was delving into arithmetic, history and geography when he died in Paris.

Obviously, fantastic memories were needed to retain all facts that these two children acquired in such little time. This led to the supposition that such infant prodigies actually matured and reached the equivalent of old age during their highly compressed lifetime. But that was refuted in the case of Jeremy Bentham, who was born in London in 1848. At the age of three, Jeremy had read many volumes of history and was learning Latin. At four, he took up French and began playing the violin. At school, he moved several classes ahead, added Greek to his store of languages, and entered Oxford at the age of thirteen.

Naturally, skeptics were convinced that Bentham could not last long at that pace, but he proved them wrong by outlasting the skeptics themselves. He lived