I think everyone has an eidetic memory, they just don't know it. I mean, how do you remember how something looks without going into your mind and looking at it?
Which of the three lights on a traffic light is red? How do you know this?
Its very easy to memorize 3 colours in order, and people do it automatically. Photographic(eidetic) memory is when image in memory is so vivid that one could describe some landscape or any other object with great detail, like looking on photograph. A number of people claimed to have eidetic memory, but science has never found a single verifiable case of photographic memory. Most people showing amazing memory abilities use mnemonic strategies, mostly the loci method. But i think that there are 2 very plausible examples of people with eidetic memory: 1.Elizabeth- teacher from Harvard. Elizabeth could project complete sensory images onto a visual scene. For example, she could imagine a beard on somebody's face, and when she did so, she actually saw it. The image was so vivid she could use it to obscure parts of her field of vision, if she wished. However, she never confused her memory images with real perception.
2. John Von Neumann(you can see him in my avatar).
JvN was able to memorize a column of the phone book at a single glance Herman Goldstine wrote about him: "One of his remarkable abilities was his power of absolute recall. As far as I could tell, von Neumann was able on once reading a book or article to quote it back verbatim; moreover, he could do it years later without hesitation"
Edited by Grandmaster, 07 December 2015 - 03:23 PM.