How to Develop a Super-Power Memory

A 1957 memory course in book form

How to Develop a Super-Power Memory by Harry Lorayne came out in 1957 from the publisher Frederick Fell. Lorayne was an entertainer who performed memory feats at hotels, clubs and company dinners. He writes in a chatty, informal style, as if he were sitting in the reader's living room. He skips brain science on purpose. He says he is a performer, not a doctor, and that he teaches only the methods he uses himself.

His central claim comes early: there is no such thing as a poor memory, only a trained or an untrained one. Untrained memories are one-sided. People who remember faces forget phone numbers, and the reverse. The cure is conscious association. We already remember things by connecting them to what we know, but we do it without noticing. Lorayne teaches readers to do it on purpose. He also argues that, with practice, the conscious method becomes automatic.

The book has 26 short chapters, and most open with a joke. Six tests near the start measure the untrained memory: a list of 15 objects, 20 objects by number, a 20-digit number, five missing cards from a deck, 15 faces with names, and ten phone numbers. Later chapters tell the reader when to retake each test, so progress shows on paper.

Observation, interest and association

The first chapters lay the groundwork. Lorayne opens with observation tests. Which light is on top of a traffic light? Is the six on your watch an Arabic or a Roman numeral? Most people are not sure, though they see both every day. His point is that we see but do not observe, and we cannot remember what we never observed.

Association is the second foundation. He reminds readers of school aids they still know: "Every Good Boy Does Fine" for the lines of the treble clef, FACE for the spaces, and the boot shape of Italy. Each one ties a new, meaningless thing to something already known.

Interest is the third. In a trick question, he describes a bus and its passengers getting on and off, then asks for the driver's name. The reader is busy counting passengers and misses that the first word of the story is "you." People remember what they care about. So the first rule is to want to remember and to trust that you will. He also argues that writing everything down weakens memory, because the note replaces the effort. In his view, "I forgot" usually means "I never remembered in the first place."

The Link system

The Link system is for remembering things in sequence. Lorayne gives a list of 20 items: carpet, paper, bottle, bed, fish, chair, window, telephone, cigarette, nail, typewriter, shoe, microphone, pen, television set, plate, donut, car, coffee pot and brick. You join each item to the next with a ridiculous mental picture. A carpet made of paper crinkles under your feet. A bottle pours out paper instead of liquid. You sleep in a giant bottle instead of a bed. After each picture, you forget the earlier item and join only the next pair.

A logical picture, such as paper lying on a carpet, will not work. The picture must be absurd, and you must actually see it for a moment. To help, he gives four rules:

• Out of proportion. Make the items gigantic.
• Action. Put violent or embarrassing action into the picture.
• Exaggeration. Picture millions of an item, not one.
• Substitution. Picture one item in place of the other, such as smoking a nail instead of a cigarette. This is the rule he uses most.

When the chain is built, each item brings back the next. The list comes back forward and also backward. If you struggle to recall the first item, he suggests linking it to the person who is testing you.

The Peg system and the phonetic alphabet

The Link handles order. The Peg system handles numbers, and it lets you recall items in and out of order. Lorayne traces the idea to Stanislaus Mink von Wennsshein around 1648 and to Richard Grey in 1730. Today the method is often called the major system.

It starts with a phonetic alphabet of ten consonant sounds, one for each digit, each with a small aid:

• 1 is T or D (a T has one downstroke)
• 2 is N (two downstrokes)
• 3 is M (three downstrokes)
• 4 is R (the last sound of "four")
• 5 is L (the Roman numeral for 50)
• 6 is J, sh, ch or soft g
• 7 is K, hard c or hard g
• 8 is F or V
• 9 is P or B
• 0 is S or Z (the first sound of "zero")

Vowels and the letters w, h and y count for nothing. Only the sound counts, not the spelling. With these sounds, any number can become a word. Lorayne then gives fixed peg words: 1 tie, 2 Noah, 3 ma, 4 rye, 5 law, 6 shoe, 7 cow, 8 ivy, 9 bee and 10 toes. The list grows in stages to 100.

To remember that item 9 is a purse, you join "bee" to purse: a swarm of bees flies out of your purse and stings you. Because each peg is fixed, you can call the items in order, backward or at random. You can also name the number when someone gives you the item. Lorayne compares the pegs to hooks in a bare wall, ready for anything you want to hang on them.

Substitute words for names and abstract information

The third tool is substitute words. For anything abstract, find a word or phrase that sounds like it and can be pictured. Lorayne learned the fins of tropical fish this way. The caudal fin became a cord in place of a tail. The dorsal fin became bandleader Tommy Dorsey playing a trombone on the fish's back. The Spanish word for bird, pajaro, sounds like "parked car," so you picture a parked car crammed with birds.

Names get three chapters, because Lorayne says most of his students come to him for help with them. His first rule needs no system: be sure you hear the name in the first place. Ask the person to repeat or spell it, comment on it, use it during the talk and use it again when you say goodbye.

Then the system. Some names already mean something (Baker, Fox, Gold). Some suggest a picture (Lincoln). The rest need a substitute word. Next, look at the face and choose one outstanding feature, such as a high forehead, a cleft chin or bushy eyebrows. Join the substitute word to that feature with an absurd picture. Mr. Sachs has a high forehead, so you see sacks falling from it. Later, the face calls up the name. Lorayne reports meeting 100 to 200 guests at a dinner and then calling each of them by name in his show.

Numbers, cards, dates and stunts

The middle chapters apply the Peg and Link systems to harder material.

• Long numbers. Break the number into pairs, turn each pair into its peg word and link the words. For 522641637527, the words are lion, notch, rod, chum, coal and neck.
• Playing cards. Each card gets a word that starts with the letter of its suit and ends with the sound of its value. "Can" is the two of clubs, "hog" the seven of hearts and "dash" the six of diamonds. Join the card words to the number pegs to memorize a shuffled deck, or to find which cards are missing.
• Phone numbers. He codes the exchange letters and digits of the 1950s phone system into pictures.
• Dates. Memorize a 12-digit number that gives the first Sunday of each month, and you can find the weekday of any date in the year. A longer method covers any date in the twentieth century.
• Emergency pegs. A short peg list based on the alphabet (ape, bean, sea and so on) gives a second set of hooks.
• Demonstrations. A 400-digit feat, and the Morse code in about half an hour.

Lorayne admits that many of these are stunts. He argues that they are good practice and that the same ideas apply at work.

Everyday uses

The practical chapters are short. For errands, link the tasks or hang them on pegs, then run through them during the day to see what is left. For speeches, do not memorize the words. Choose a key word for each thought and link the key words. The thoughts come back in order, and the words take care of themselves. The same method works for articles, scripts and jokes. His magazine stunt hangs the main picture on each page on the peg for that page number.

He treats absent-mindedness as inattention, not a poor memory. You lose your glasses because you put them down without thinking. The fix is a conscious association at the moment of action. To remember to take a letter, link it to the last thing you see when you leave home, such as the doorknob. For appointments, he numbers the weekdays from Monday as 1 and combines the day and the hour into a peg word: Wednesday at 4:00 is 34, "mower." The last chapter lists more targets, such as prices, style numbers, state capitals and calories.

What the critics say

The core methods hold up. Laboratory studies since the 1960s find that peg and link mnemonics improve recall of lists, and the keyword method, a close relative of substitute words, helps people learn foreign vocabulary. Research is less firm on his insistence on ridiculous images: the interaction between the two items seems to matter more than oddness, and bizarre images help mostly when they stand out among ordinary ones. Some claims are overstated, such as the idea that memory has no limit or that we use only a small part of our brain power. The examples are dated (telephone exchanges, cigarette tax stamps, typewriters), and the systems help most with arbitrary facts rather than understanding. Lorayne later reworked the same systems in The Memory Book (1974) with Jerry Lucas, which became his best-known book.

Who should read it

Read it if you want the classic Link and Peg systems from one of the people who made them popular, in a short and chatty form. Expect dated examples and stage stunts, and expect to do the exercises, because the systems work only with practice.