Recent decades have seen a surge in the record number of digits memorized.
<p>Created with Gnuplot from the following data supplied by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mebden" class="extiw" title="en:User:Mebden">User:Mebden</a>:
Around:
</p>
<pre>1973.5 930
1973.81 1110
1973.95 1210
1974.5 1505
1975.93 4095
1977.3 5050
1978 10000
1979 10625
1980 20015
1981.6 31810
1987.3 40000
1995.2 42195
2005.6 83430
2006.81 100000
</pre>
 2008.91 120539
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keenan_Pepper" class="extiw" title="wikipedia:User:Keenan Pepper">Keenan Pepper</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/" class="extiw" title="wikipedia:">English Wikipedia</a>
9 August 2007 (original upload date)
This  plot was created with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnuplot" class="extiw" title="w:Gnuplot">Gnuplot</a>.