ring a bell?

[feistycurves]

what's the origins of the phrase "doesn't ring a bell"?

[Clanad]

One source states: "...Old-fashioned carnivals and amusement parks featured shooting galleries, in which patrons were invited to test their marksmanship by shooting at a target � often with a bell at the center: if something was right on target, it rang the bell. Similarly, to say that something �doesn�t ring a bells� means that it doesn�t strike any �target� (evoke any response) in your mind.� (From Loose Cannons and Red Herrings, by Robert Claiborne)

[dr b]

At a certain monastery new monks were required to get up early, go to the bell tower and pull the rope to call the other monks to morning prayers. The newest monk dutifully got up and went to the bell tower, only to find to his chagrin that the bell was missing its clapper. Not knowing what else to do, he got under the big bell and ran back and forth, hitting his head against the inside of the bell. This succeeded in waking up the other monks; the new guy staggered out of the tower and collapsed on the lawn.

Two monks walked by; one said "Hey ,who's the new guy?" The other said, "I don't know his name, but his face rings a bell."

[Quizmonster]

I believe the first time the phrase was used in the sense of 'awakening a memory', it referred to the experiments carried out by the Russian scientist, Ivan Pavlov. He was a physiologist who studied conditioned responses in animals. One of his tests was to feed dogs whilst ringing a bell at the same time. The dogs began to salivate because of the food initially, of course. However, later he found he could make them salivate merely by ringing the bell without providing food, as they had come to associate sound and food in their memories.
Hence, we now use the phrase: "that rings a bell" to signify the fact that our memories have been stimulated into action.