Interestingly, the term Eidetic Memory didn't arise until the 1920s, so this kinda checks out.
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
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Glad to know I wasn't the only one who looked it up, lol
Glad that I didn't have to, because I was totally going to
Damn, I was gonna mention that since I learned it from Vampire the Masquerade years ago, never even occurred to me it would only be about a century old
My memory is downright hieroglyphic.
Eidetic memory is an older term.
eidetic - "pertaining to the faculty of projecting images," 1924, from German eidetisch, coined by German psychologist Erich Jaensch [n.b. born 1883, died 1940], from Greek eidetikos "pertaining to images," also "pertaining to knowledge," from eidesis "knowledge," from eidos "form, shape"
Looking into it, it seems that perhaps it was not notable until recently. This is likely a limitation of my searches and popular understanding. Does anyone know of ancient Greek writing on the subject? (Perhaps I am too quick to discount the trained memorization of bards and storytellers of old, which I understand typically used memorization and not Total Recall?)
Funes the Memorious was written long after the camera was invented.
The Wikipedia pages on Eidetic Memory and Hyperthymesia cover different aspects, but neither cites anything older than "Funes the Memorious". "Total Recall" is also used for the ability, but also does not appear to have a long history.
Unrelated but fun: ‘Photographic Memory’ The story of how we stored digital photographs
I never really thought about it, but 19th century novels etc just refer to "excellent" or "exceedingly keen" memory. Like it was part of the memory recall continuum. Eidetic and photographic make it a category difference, like it's a different thing than the regular memory continuum.
Borges mentioned. Amazing writer.
The best that I can gleen is that there really wasn't any interest in nailing it down until recently. It was just seen as a "quirk", similar to other disorders that just now are being recognized. As neat as it is, eidetic memory is in fact a disorder, as it typically interferes with a person's livelihood.
‘Funes’ was apparently inspired by Solomon Shereshevsky, who was ‘active in 1920s’, whatever exactly that means. The article on mnemonists lists a couple more living around that time, but nobody earlier.
List of people claimed to possess an eidetic memory has two or three people born around 1860-'70, and among earlier murky claims a notable outlier Leonhard Euler:
He was able to, for example, repeat the Aeneid of Virgil from beginning to end without hesitation, and for every page in the edition he could indicate which line was the first and which was the last even decades after having read it.
The article on ‘memory sport’ says: “Techniques for training memory are discussed as far back as ancient Greece, and formal memory training was long considered an important part of basic education known as the art of memory” and cites ‘Secrets of a Mind-Gamer’ from NYT — but this is of course different from natural eidetic memory. ‘Art of memory’ also discusses techniques from the ancient times.
Yeah, but what about the megapixels, shutter speed, etc?
I have photographic memory too. But everything has huge lens distortion, is out of focus, has overlay filters and is significantly photoshopped.
I have photographic memory but someone left the lens cap on
SD card not found
I have a photographic memory but everything is saved as an AI prompt and regenerated using AI using a randomiser seeded by duration from the time saved, when I try to "recall" it.
Best I can do is pornographic memory.
Is there a reliable way to measure memory, one which has existed for a long time. Are modern people better or worse at remembering than centuries ago. Vocabulary is always increasing as is education. Did people remember more when there was less to remember?
sweaty ahh word LMAO XDDD