Plans, details, free-hand sketches, and two-dimension photographs surpass the highest form of mental imagery, and such cultivated imagery is undoubtedly a high achievement.  There is no kind of memory, visualization, nor constructive imagination that can equal the stereoscopic or three-dimension photographs that may accompany the instruction card for enabling the worker to “see the completed work before it is begun.”  Probably the greatest hindrance to development of lower forms of animal life is their inability to picture past experiences, and the reason for the intellectual strides made by the worker under Scientific Management is the development of this faculty.

A CONSERVER OF INDIVIDUAL MEMORIES.—­Many people believe that the memory of a person ceases at his death.  Whether this is so or not, the loss to the world, and particularly the industrial world, of not having the instruction card for the passing on of the worker’s experience to the workers who follow is stupendous and incalculable, and this loss, like so many other losses, can be eliminated by the process of making written standards.

MOTOR MEMORY IMPROVED BY STANDARDIZATION.—­Not only are the retentive powers of the brain improved, but also the brain centers, and the muscles, etc., become trained through standardization.  With standardization a long sequence of muscular motions or operations can be noted at a glance, and can be remembered without difficulty.

STANDARDS PREVENT MEN FROM BECOMING MACHINES.—­Those who object to the worker taking advantage of these scientifically derived standards which aid the memory, can only be compared to such people as desire the workers to turn into unthinking animals.  Psychologists believe that some of the lower animals have no memory.  Turning the workers into machines which do not in any way utilize thought-saving devices is simply putting them but little above the class of these lower, memory-less, animals.

THROUGH STANDARDS THE WORKER’S ATTENTION IS GAINED AT THE START.—­The general act of attention plays an important part in Scientific Management.  The insistence upon standardized performance requires the utmost attention at the beginning of learning a new method of performance.  This extra output of mental activity, which is always required for accomplishing new methods of work, could not be continuously maintained, but after the new method has once been learned, its repetition requires less attention, consequently less fatigue.  The attention of the worker is, therefore, strongly demanded at the beginning and when, later, it is not needed except for new and unfamiliar work, an opportunity arises for invention and mental advancement.

ATTENTION ALLOWED TO LAPSE AND THEN RECALLED.—­Standardization shifts the objects of attention and eliminates the need for constant concentration.  The standardization of processes relieves the worker to a marked extent from the extremely fatiguing mental effort of unproductive fixed, valueless, and unnecessary attention on the stream of consciousness.  The repeated elements which form a part of all standards reconcentrates the attention if it is allowed to lapse.