One needs but to say that, in the case of an unfamiliar sequence of syllables, only about seven can be grasped in one act, but that with frequent repetition and gradually increasing familiarity with the series this capacity of consciousness may be increased.

While the specifics on how these mental abilities were measured have been lost the successes achieved by the commission laid the groundwork for future intelligence testing. After eliminating the meaning-laden syllables Ebbinghaus ended up with 2300 resultant syllables. At the age of 17 (1867) he began attending the University of Bonn where he had planned to study history and philology.

Hermann Ebbinghaus (January 24 1850 — February 26 1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve.