Forgotten mnemonists

Abstract

Despite recent interest in persons with unusually good memories, several experimental studies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remain largely ignored. These include studies both of persons using methods similar to the classical art of memory and others, mental calculators, at least one of whom showed supranormal memory capacity for other items as well as numbers. This paper reviews these studies, particularly ones by Binet, Georg Müller, and Susukita, compares the methods and capacities of the various mnemonists, and presents some possible reasons as to why this literature has been neglected.