‘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.
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.
‘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:
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.