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Chapter - 15

The Practical Application Of Numerical Codes

I assume that before continuing you will have memorized the numerical code so well that you can substitute numbers for every word you hear or read. But we must remember we did not learn the numerical code in order to express words in numbers, but for the reverse purpose: to remember numbers through words. Everything that has been done up to this point was with this goal in mind.

Taking any word haphazardly, there is only one number-equivalent which is just right. On the other hand, there are a great variety of words which you can translate into this number. This is, as you see at a glance, of extraordinary advantage. It is also the reason why we left the various vowels and the consonants w and h without any number-value.

Take, for instance, the number 914. You can translate this into the words poetry, battery, potter, patter, powder, better, betray, boudoir, butter, etc. The flexibility of this method is naturally advantageous because of the large number of words which can be so simply formulated for practical purposes.

In everyday life you never note a number for itself alone, that is, without its connection with a fact, a subject or an event. If an event in history is concerned, it means the number belongs to a certain historical occurrence. If a geographical fact is concerned, the number is to be remembered in connection with the height of a mountain, the length of a river, the population of a town, or the like. If a telephone number, it is in connection with the person whose phone number it is. In every instance, therefore, the number is associated with something else and is meaningless when dissociated from it.

If you had a definite code word for each number, it would sometimes be difficult to establish a connection between the word and the event. Through careful practice you have now attained such facility in making associations that this difficulty should appear very slight. Nevertheless we must not forget that mnemotechny exists to make learning as simple as possible. If we are not restricted to one word alone, if we have a choice among a great variety of words, it is naturally much easier to pick out the word with which the number is associated which best fits the fact, event or subject.

In order to make this task easier, I have prepared a little dictionary of numbers, to spare you the trouble of hunting through the big dictionary yourself for a suitable word or digging it up from memory.

So we proceed as follows: Assume you want to remember, or want your students to remember, the year 1914 as the beginning of the World War. First we cross off the initial 1. We can always omit the thousands in historical t figures without any danger, since we are not apt to be 1000 years wrong on a historical fact. Striking off the 1 simplifies our task.

For the number 914 the dictionary gives all the words I mentioned earlier and a few more, which we will talk about shortly. From these words we choose, say "battery," since this concept is very easy to tie up with "war." It is easier for a student to associate the word "battery" with war than to learn the number 1914 by heart. The two concepts—the word "battery" and the number "914"—mean the same to one who knows the numerical code.

Instead of "battery" you may choose "poetry" if you remember how many so-called poems of heroism were written by patriots on both sides at the beginning of the World War.

A partisan of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) would perhaps prefer the word "butter," because this commodity was scarce soon after the start of the war.

Note that the actual word you choose is a matter of no importance and that you can choose one to suit your individual taste. This fact shows the superiority of this flexible system which allows the arbitrary insertion of vowels.

And after you see what great advantages a choice among various words offers in remembering figures, I will give you another method, likewise referring to the dictionary, which expands this choice considerably: Practical usage has demonstrated that there is no point in translating more than three consonants of a word, naturally the first three, in order to avoid errors. The other consonants we will completely disregard and by so doing we will enhance considerably the number of words at our disposal.

If we stay with the number 914, besides the words already named, we can use "butterfly," because only the first three consonants are counted and the following consonants f and 1 are disregarded. Or we can use the following words to indicate 914: patriot, patron, paternoster, bedroom, buttermilk, petrifaction, petroleum, putrid, putter, putrescence.

This list does not exhaust the possibilities, but it shows this method offers such a variety of words that we always have the possibility of finding one which fits the case especially well. With this in mind, if we are to remember the year 1914 as the beginning of the World War, we would presumably prefer the word "patriot" to all the others.

I will try now to present a variety of examples which will show you how this method operates in actual life.

History:

Battle of Agincourt, 1415—artillery (artillery-battle)

Congress of Vienna, 1815—fatal (the results of the congress were fatal for all concerned)

Magna Charta, 1215—intellect (the signing of the Magna Charta was a sign of awakening intelligence)

Newton discovered gravitation, 1656—geology (the magnetic qualities of the earth rest on geologic premises)

Geography:

5 7 1

The height of Niagara Falls is 571 feet—liquid

The area of France is 212,659 square miles—

2 1 2 6 5 9

No town shall bow

Chemistry:

Gold melts at 1945° F.—pearl (pearls—valuable—gold) Silver melts at 1760° F.—cashes (cash—money—silver) Water boils at 212° F.—intense.

Weight of water per cubic foot is 62.5 lbs.—channel. Weight of sea water per cubic foot is 64 lbs.—shore. Weight of cast iron per cubic foot is 450 lbs.—rails.
Instead of noting the first three consonants of a word, you can form complete sentences and count only the initial consonant of each word. There is a greater possibility of variation in this method and therefore it is easier to apply.

History:

Washington was inaugurated as President in 1789—

First President.

Napoleon became emperor in 1852—Louis Napoleon. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865—Shot Lincoln.

Fulton's first steamboat trip was in 1807—Steamboat came. Peary discovered the North Pole in 1909—Peary saw pole. Washington was born in 1732, died in 1799—Mourn now

President's passing.

General examples:

Jenny Lind made her New York debut in 1850—Lind sang.

The Amazon, the longest river, is 3800 miles—Most vast.

One cubic foot equals 1728 cubic inches—The cubic number of feet.

Copper melts at 1981 ° F.—Ten pennies for a dime (cop per suggests penny).

Lead melts at 621° F.—Choose new type (in printing).

Now let us apply this method in memorizing the terms of the Presidents. We have the choice of connecting the substituting word with the President's name or with the substitute word which we gave him in the list of Presidents. It is more difficult to make our connection with the President's name, as that presupposes some knowledge of the man himself. Therefore it is simpler to use the key word as a general rule, though in a few obvious instances, as Jefferson, Lincoln, Taft and Hoover, I have not followed that rule.

In the following example I give the linking words which seem simplest to me, and where it seems advisable I add substituting words for the Presidential date. The Presidential series is repeated here for your convenience:
In Washington Adam was jeopardized by a mad monster. Adam and Jack ran to the bureau, but in their hurry they broke a tile or poked a tailor. They filmed more buildings, pierced by a cannon which was linked by John to a grand tree.

The haze over garden and field sheltered Arthur, who cleaved his way in a hurry. He cleaved mockingly as he cried: "A rose taffeta dress will hardly be the right thing in a college; but whoever desires rose veils may truly wear them."

Now, in learning the dates, we must be careful to select words which have a close connection with each President or with the substituting words in the story. Since it is taken for granted that anyone would know the centuries of the respective presidential terms, we need substituting words for the last two figures only. And as we need concern ourselves only with two figures in each case, it makes no difference how many consonants there are in the substituting words in addition to the initial two.

Here are the key words, with explanatory notes in case they are not clear:

1. Washington 1789 Washington
fable (there are many fables about George Washington)

2. Adams 1797 Adam 
epoch (with Adam and Eve began a new epoch in world history)

3. Jefferson 1801
statement of rights (Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence)

4. Madison 1809 mad
spiteful (both words have a similar meaning)

5. Monroe 1817 monster —attack

6. Adams 1825 Adam—knowledge (the apple from the tree of knowledge)

7. Jackson 1829 Jack—unbending (Andrew Jackson was unbending)

8. Van Buren 1837 bureau—mocha (on the bureau is some coffee)

9. Harrison 1841 hurry—ready

10. Tyler 1841 tile—hard

11. Polk 1845 poke—relent or relax

12. Taylor 1849 tailor   —robe

13. Fillmore 1850 film—lucid or illustration

14. Pierce 1853 pierced—limb (a limb pierced by a bullet)

15. Buchanan 1857 cannon —lock

16. Lincoln 1861—shot (Lincoln was shot)

17. Johnson 1865 John—jolly (similar to John in sound)

18. Grant 1869 grand—chap

19. Hayes 1877 haze—coke (smoke from coke makes haze)

20. Garfield 1881 field—food

21. Arthur 1881 Arthur—feat (King Arthur's feats)

22. Cleveland 1885 cleave—fly or flay

23. Harrison 1889 hurry—evaporate (moisture evaporates hurriedly)

24. Cleveland 1893 cleave—boomerang or bomb (it cleaves the air)

25. McKinley 1897 mockingly —beguile

26. Roosevelt 1901 rose—sweet (the rose is the sweetest flower)

27. Taft 1909—supreme (Taft was on the Supreme Court)

28. Wilson 1913 will—tomb (Unknown Soldier's Tomb)

29. Harding 1921 hard—nut

30. Coolidge 1923 college—name or number

31. Hoover 1929—unhappy (the 1929 crash)

32. Roosevelt 1933 rose—mama

33. Truman 1945 true   —ruler

All of these auxiliary key words have been chosen to be remembered after one or two readings. Thus you can learn the dates for all Presidents in from five to ten minutes; a task which might take you hours in the old-fashioned way of memorizing. And, as a rule, memorized dates vanish from one's mind soon. If you try this out on your circle of friends, you'll find very few who remember their Presidents, even though they must have memorized them for school.

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