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After visiting a majority of the schools for the blind in the United States where either New York Point or American braille was in use, the committee felt that some tests should be made in a school where the British version of braille was in vogue. Practically the only school in North America answering this description was the one at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Accordingly, Halifax was visited and several scores of pupils were tested. Immediately, the agents were impressed by the facility with which these pupils read, and to their consternation a study of test sheets indicated a striking superiority of British braille over either American braille or New York Point.

A hasty meeting of the committee was called in Boston and the results to date reviewed. Twelve hundred American readers had been tested. They were about equally divided between New York Point and American braille. In most respects American braille had been demonstrated to be superior to New York Point, though New York Point had certain space-saving advantages resulting from its variable base which made books in that system more compact. Now they were confronted with results of tests made of British braille which seemed to show that that system was superior to either of the American systems. However, it was judged both dangerous and unfair to scrap the two American types on the showing made with British braille by hardly a hundred readers.

The data collected, however, was so convincing that when it was laid before the committee, it was apparent to all that neither American braille nor New York Point would survive. However, British braille had exhibited certain weaknesses, and if the slate were clean and a new system devised it seemed probable that a punctographic code theoretically superior to any of the three could be developed.

The committee feared that if British braille were adopted with all of its faults, some future student of the subject might again upset the whole world of the blind with a type controversy by promoting a scientifically demonstrable superior code. Therefore, it was decided to strike out boldly and work out an entirely new code -- a code that would utilize the British or French braille alphabet and, for contraction purposes, utilize characters which had been demonstrated to be the most legible to represent groups of letters recurring with the greatest frequency in the English language -- a code which would not only utilize a cell three dots high but would also utilize the variable base which had given to New York Point its space-saving and some other advantages.

Accordingly, on June 25, 1913 the committee recommended at the convention of the American Association of Workers for the Blind held at Jacksonville, Illinois that an entirely new system, to be known as Standard Dot, be promulgated for use throughout the entire country, scrapping both New York Point and American braille.

The recommendations of the committee were approved when put before the delegates to the convention and the committee was directed to elaborate further the proposed system. This outcome was not a victory for any of the contending systems. The American braille code was discarded but the three levels of dots upon which it was based and the principle of frequency of recurrence, fundamental parts of the system, were retained. The New York Point code was also discarded but the variable base as well as the principle of frequency of recurrence was retained. The advocates of both systems were crushed, and they were left to take what comfort they could out of what remained, plus the fact that their hated rival had fared no better.

What is this British braille system that had shown up so well? What had been happening in England during all this time? In 1876 through the influence of the British and Foreign Blind Association, later the National Institute for the Blind, Louis Braille's French alphabet, with upwards of two hundred contractions and abbreviations adapted to the English language, won ascendancy over all other competitors as the reading code for the blind of Great Britain. Among its contractions were characters standing for ing, ch, sh, action, ally; and such abbreviations as shd for should, bl for blind, rcv for receive, dcv for deceive, etc. After several years' experience with the new code considerable dissatisfaction with its set of contractions had grown up throughout Great Britain. The Hora Jucunda, a braille magazine published in Edinburgh, opened its columns to a discussion of the merits and demerits of braille as early as 1893. Soon it began agitating for the appointment of a representative committee to revise the system.

In 1902 the various interested groups got together on a committee known as the British Braille Committee sponsored jointly by the British and Foreign Blind Association and the Gardner's Trust for the Blind. This committee, after some three years of work, agreed upon a new set of rules and contractions. This system was to be known as British Revised braille. The alphabet, numerals, punctuation and a few other signs made up what was called Revised braille grade 1. Revised braille grade 2 consisted of grade 1 plus some two hundred contractions and abbreviations. Revised braille grade 3 consisted of grade 2 plus upwards of a thousand more contractions and abbreviations. These contractions were selected largely on the basis of personal observation as to their usefulness and frequency of recurrence in English. Some one said that these contractions were an aggregate of individual preferences rather than a set of scientific symbols, as no extended study had been made to demonstrate their value.