Kurzer Auszug aus einem frühen Artikel von George Miller (aus der Zeit, in der sein bekanntester Artikel The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two entstand).

Nirgendwo sonst macht Miller deutlich, wie er auf sein Chunk-Konzept gekommen ist. Die Verwobenheit der ersten Tage der computer science mit den ersten Tagen der cognitive psychology ist auf den ersten Blick erstaunlich, auf dem zweiten Blick nicht wegzudenken!

Miller, G. A. (1956). Information and memory. Scientific American, 195, 42-46.

Miller's experience with computers provided him with a major clue to the chunking process. It was

... vividly illustrated for me the first time I saw one of those digital computing machines that have small neon lights to show which relays are closed. There were 20 lights in a row, and I did not see how the men who ran the machine could grasp and remember a pattern involving so many elements. I quickly discovered that they did not try to deal with each light as an individual item of information. Instead, they [...] grouped the lights into successive triplets and gave each possible triplet pattern a number as its name, or symbol (Miller, 1956, p. 43).