THE ART OF MEMORY · LESSON 22 OF 30 · PART V: ADVANCED TECHNIQUES

A Palace of Centuries

A schoolmaster in 1730 invented words made of dates. You will build a house with one room for every century and fill it with events.

Memory hook: a schoolmaster leads pupils through a line of rooms, each furnished in a later century, with a crowned king landing by longship in the Norman room.

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In this lesson: you will build a timeline palace with a room for each century, turn the last two digits of a year into a picture, and join it to the event.

Where we left off

What are the four small steps of memorising one item at speed?

Look-up, build, place, move on.

What is a bottleneck?

The slowest step, which you should fix first.

When should you start timing yourself?

When you can do the task correctly at a slow pace.

The schoolmaster's strange words

England in the 1720s. A clergyman and schoolmaster, Richard Grey, has a problem every history teacher knows. His pupils can recite the story of the Norman Conquest, but they cannot tell you the year. They can name the kings, but not the order. Dates, he finds, are the first thing to fall out of a pupil's head.

A date is a number, and we saw in the second part what the mind does with numbers: it lets go. Grey decided to do something about it.

What problem did Richard Grey notice among his pupils?

They could not hold on to dates. Numbers are the first thing to fall out of memory.

Talk about it. Which historical dates can you remember? How did you learn them?

In 1730 he published a small book called Memoria Technica, 'the technical memory'. In it he gave a code in which letters stood for digits, so that a date became a word, or a made-up word, which a pupil could learn like any other. The date of an event was hidden in a nonsense word that sounded a little like its name.

The strange words were never popular. They were clever but hard to learn: the code itself had to be memorised, and the words were dull. But the idea was sound, and it was the same as ours: turn a number into something you can say and see.

What was the Memoria Technica?

A 1730 book that used a code of letters for digits to turn dates into words, so pupils could learn them like words.

Talk about it. Why do you think the nonsense words were not popular?

We can do better with what we have. A date has two halves. The first two digits name the century; the last two name the year. There are only a few centuries that matter, and they can be rooms. There are a hundred possible year-endings, and they are the hundred pictures you already have from the numbers part.

So a date becomes a place and a picture. The place is the century's room. The picture is the year-ending, joined to the event itself. For 1066: the room of the eleventh century, a judge (66), and a battlefield. You will see it, and you will not need to learn a nonsense word.

How does the timeline palace store a date?

The century is a room, the last two digits are a picture, and the event is the scene they act in.

Talk about it. How many centuries would you need rooms for, to cover the dates you care about most?

Words worth knowing

Say what you think each one means, then open it.

a period of a hundred years. The eleventh century is the 1000s.

in the order that things happened. A chronological list.

a line or list showing events in order of time.

something that happens, especially something important.

to take a country or place by force.

a length of time. A historical period.

Richard Grey's Memoria Technica was published in 1730. The details of his code are not needed here.

Rooms for centuries, pictures for years

A year has two parts: the century (which room) and the last two digits (which picture).

Build a timeline palace. A building with a room for each century you need, in time order from the front door. A twelve-room house covers the eleventh to the twentieth centuries and a bit more.
Know your two-digit pictures. Use your Major System words (lesson 7): 66 = judge, 15 = doll, 92 = bone, 89 = fib, 69 = ship.
Make the event a scene. A few strong facts: who, where, what.
Join the year picture to the event. In the century's room, the year picture acts in the scene.
Walk the timeline. From the oldest room to the newest. The order of events is the order of rooms.

1066 in the eleventh-century room

The Battle of Hastings, 1066.

RoomThe eleventh century (the 1000s): the first room.

Year picture66 = JUDGE.

EventNorman soldiers and Saxon archers at Hastings.

SceneA judge in a wig stands in the middle of the battle, banging a gavel, as an arrow hits his hat. 'Order!' he shouts at the Normans.

The picture: A judge in a wig calling 'order!' in the middle of the battle of Hastings, with an arrow through his hat.

Year	Room	Year picture	Event scene
1066	11th century	judge (66)	A judge bangs a gavel at Hastings.
1215	13th century	doll (15)	Barons force King John to sign a scroll with a giant doll's hand.
1492	15th century	bone (92)	Columbus's ship has a giant bone for a mast.
1789	18th century	fib (89)	A revolutionary tells a huge fib at the gates of the Bastille.
1815	19th century	tail (15)	Napoleon trips over a lion's tail at Waterloo.
1969	20th century	ship (69)	A silver ship lands on the moon with a flag.

Tips

Only the last two digits need a picture. The room carries the century.
Keep the event simple. One strong image of what happened.
Learn the sequence as a story as you walk from room to room: each event leads to the next.
Check by number sense. If it is the 1900s, you know the first two digits already.

century = room.
last two digits = picture.
event = the scene.

Say it aloud. Tell the scene for 1066 and one other date aloud, and name the room it lives in.

Now you build

Have a go before you open any answer. A rough attempt teaches you more than a perfect model you only read.

Year endings

Use the Major System. Match each year ending to a word.

1492

Columbus sails across the Atlantic in 1492. The ending is 92 (bone or pen). Make a scene in the fifteenth-century room.

The ending is a picture with the right sounds. The event is in the scene. It is moving.

A tiny wooden ship, with a giant bone for a mast, sails into the room, and a flock of seagulls tries to eat the mast.

1789 and 1989

1789: the French Revolution begins. 1989: the Berlin Wall falls. Both end in 89 (fib). Make two scenes that are very different from each other.

There are two scenes. Each is in a different room. They do not look alike.

1789 (18th-century room): a man in a powdered wig tells a huge fib at the Bastille, and his nose grows until it knocks over the gate. 1989 (20th-century room): people pull down a wall of cardboard bricks, laughing, while each brick says 'FIB' on one side.

1969 and 1815

1969: the Moon landing (69 = ship). 1815: Waterloo (15 = tail). Make a scene for each in its own century's room.

There are two scenes. Each is in the right room. Each has the event and the ending picture.

1969: a silver ship lands in the moon-dust, with an enormous flag. 1815: Napoleon steps on a lion's tail on the battlefield, and the lion roars.

Lessons

The year 1066 belongs to the century.

The year 1969 belongs to the century.

The year 1492 belongs to the century.

Why use a room per century?

A tour of the timeline

Tell the story of the six dates from the table, walking through the rooms in order.

1:30

Drill

Flash cards

Say the answer first, then tap the card.

tap to turn over

Quick quiz

In which century did the Berlin Wall fall?

What does the century's room tell you?

Which year is the French Revolution?

What gives you the order of the events?

The memory challenge

Memory challenge: seven years

Learn these seven years in order: 1066, 1215, 1492, 1789, 1815, 1969, 1989. Walk through seven rooms. Type the years back, one per line.

Judge, doll, bone, fib, tail, ship, fib again: which room is each in?

0:00

The list has gone. Type what you remember, one item per line.

Look back

These reach back to earlier rooms. Answer in your head or out loud, then check.

Lesson 21 · Against the Clock. How do you get faster at memorising?

Find the slowest step and make it automatic.

Lesson 20 · The Night Before the Exam. Name the five steps of the study cycle.

Understand, picture, place, test yourself, come back.

Lesson 7 · The Major System. What is 66 in the Major System?

j/sh + j/sh: for example 'judge'.

Lesson 4 · The Memory Palace. Why must a palace route be fixed?

The order of the places gives the order of the list.

What I can do now

I can build a timeline palace with one room per century.
I can turn the last two digits of a year into a picture.
I can join a year picture to an event scene.

A thought to keep

Which ten dates would you most like to keep for good? In which rooms would they sit?

Saved on this device as you type.

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