Roth Memory Course: A Simple and Scientific Method of Improving the Memory and Increasing Mental Power

UPDATED EDITION Dec. 2014: Only applies to edition with red circle over finger with string on it, with white background - edited by Pat Stephenson:All original 1918 edition illustrations included; typos corrected; headers show lesson number on each page, & note-taking pages enhanced.

Roth Memory Course, A Simple and Scientific Method of Improving the Memory and Increasing Mental Power, is for everyone who would like to improve their memory, whether for business, personal, or study purposes, with such methods as brain games and memory games. While some are fortunate enough to be born with an excellent memory, those of us who were not can learn this skill successfully. The author created this system out of his own desire to improve his memory and improved it dramatically. His friends insisted that he teach them his course; and his career was born.

Excerpt below from Lesson One of Roth Memory Course: A Simple and Scientific Method of Improving the Memory and Increasing Mental Power is Roth’s personal account, shows how anyone who applies his memory “secrets” can dramatically improve their memory too:

HOW I DISCOVERED AN EASY WAY TO REMEMBERHow I BeganWhen I was a young man my memory was below normal. It was because my memory was so wretched that I determined to find some way to cure the trouble.

It did not take me long to discover that a bad memory is not so much a matter of forgetting as of not getting at all.

In other words, the pictures made on the brain were blurred, indistinct, foggy.This applied to facts, figures, names, and faces — all of which slipped from my mind because my mind had never really taken a firm hold on them.

My ears had heard the name spoken, my eyes had seen his face, but my brain had failed to register any picture of either or to connect the two permanently.

So with my work in high school — I seemed to grasp what I heard and read, without trouble — perhaps too easily — but I did not grip it fast.

It went into one ear and out of the other.

Here, then, was the trouble — the lenses of my senses did not focus sharp pictures on my brain.

My mental images were so weak, shallow, diffused or confused that they would not reproduce when I called for them.

How I SucceededThe memory systems that have been taught seemed to me too complex, too difficult, too much like drudgery, and lacking in practical effectiveness. Some of them were valuable to men of exceptional brain capacity and education, but I had no exceptional brain. It was just average, nothing more.

But I had to do something, because my poor memory was too heavy a handicap for me to succeed.

So I set about evolving a method of my own to supply my own great need. I worked along simple, natural, yet scientific lines.

It proved effective. I was astounded at the progress I made in improving my memory.

I explained this method to my friends. It helped them as much as it did me.

It was through the enthusiasm and insistence of my friends that I was practically forced into making memory training my life work.

Now, fifty or a hundred persons in an audience may rise, one after the other, every one telling me his name. While my back is turned, they may all change seats to different parts of the hall. Then I can call each person by name.

People gasp when I do such things; yet, with the simple memory system I have devised, any one of them, with a little application, can learn to accomplish even more difficult feats.

I have met more than ten thousand people in the last few years, from Seattle to New York, and believe that I could meet almost any one of them unexpectedly and call him by name.

How You Can SucceedYou can do the same things if you will apply yourself to my memory method. ....

....So few persons come anywhere near to a full realization of their mental possibilities. It is simply a matter of knowing how.