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However, this committee submitted its report to its sponsoring organizations in 1905 shortly before the meeting of the International Conference on the Blind in Edinburgh. The Edinburgh convention approved the report. This action, however, had no international significance because only a few foreign visitors attended this British meeting.

To revert to the American Uniform Type Committee in 1913 -- a more detailed study of British braille seemed called for. A careful study of the committee treasury and of the cost of travel to Great Britain and other financial considerations indicated that by scrimping painfully and omitting a printed report, and by travelling on the steamship at the lowest possible rate, the representatives of the committee could go to England and make a limited number of tests.

On the day before leaving for England Chairman Holmes received a letter from Mr. M. C. Migel in New York expressing his interest in the work of the committee and enclosing a check. No one unacquainted with the zeal of the Uniform Type Committee members can realize what this sudden discovery of such a financial sponsor meant to them. Now the representatives of the committee could travel in a dignified, comfortable way with resources which would enable them to visit several large centers of population in Great Britain where a sufficient number of blind subjects could be found to give conclusive results.

The representatives of the committee were Messrs. Fowler and Latimer, Miss Howard and Mrs. Fowler. They sailed in the early summer of 1914, and their stay in England coincided with the International Conference on the Blind in London.

Several other persons intimately familiar with the work of the Uniform Type Committee were also in attendance. The delegates were most cordially received by workers for the blind in Great Britain, who gave full support to the investigations carried on by the committee. Upon its return to America the work was begun on the development of the proposed Standard Dot system.

In 1915 the convention of the American Association of Workers for the Blind was scheduled for Berkeley, California, mainly to give its members an opportunity to visit also the Panama Pacific Exposition held in San Francisco, across the Bay. The sister association, the American Association of Instructors of the Blind for the same reason had postponed for one year its convention originally scheduled for 1914, and had decided to hold a joint meeting with the American Association of Workers for the Blind. Before the two associations the Uniform Type Committee reported the completion of its work on the development of the Standard Dot code and recommended its adoption for general use. The American Association of Workers for the Blind accepted the report and adopted the new system. The American Association of Instructors of the Blind, composed mostly of seeing executives, was a little more cautious. It voted to accept the Standard Dot system only on condition that the British type authorities would likewise.

The report also recommended that the Uniform Type Committee be forthwith discharged, as its work was considered finished. This was done, and in its place the two associations created the Commission on Uniform Type for the Blind to carry on the work.

Miss H. C. Russell was present at this meeting, representing the National Institute for the Blind in Great Britain. She was not overly optimistic about the acceptance of the new code by her British countrymen.

As one looks back on it now, in the light of what has happened since, it was naive of any of this group to think that the practical, hard-headed British authorities in control for the blind, who were perfectly satisfied with the type they then had, would accept any such proposal. As recently as 1905 the British had revised their code and at great expense had scrapped their old system of contractions upon the recommendation of a committee that had given long study to the subject. However, in a spirit of innocent optimism, Standard Dot was seriously proposed as a worldwide type for the English-speaking blind. The British studied the code and while the official correspondence on the subject was polite, they popularly dubbed it "Standard Rot" and would have none of it.

Under the date of December 15, 1915 Mr. W. M. Stone, Headmaster of the Craigmillar School for the Blind in Edinburgh, wrote an open letter to Mr. H. R. Latimer, Secretary of the new American Commission on Uniform Type for the Blind, which was obviously intended largely for home consumption. This letter which was published in the British periodical Teacher of the Blind for January, 1916 read in part as follows: "What is it that you claim for Standard Dot? I know what you will reply -- uniformity, increase of accuracy, increase of speed. Well, we want uniformity, we want it badly; but we think there are other ways of reaching it. There would be uniformity if you adopted British braille. There are more readers of British than of any other system of punctography. People frequently talk as if British braille was the concern only of those living in the British Isles. It is the system of the blind of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and India. It is as nearly identical with the braille of European countries as differences of language make possible, and it is actually read by great numbers of every European country. Therefore, if uniformity is to be the great gain, it is only reasonable to ask you to conform to our system. With regard to increase of accuracy, I must candidly say I think that accuracy after reaching a certain point is of little importance. I find that blind people, children or adults, read quite as accurately as seeing people. And the gain you show in accuracy is so very small, only two per cent. You see I am accepting your figures, but it must be remembered they are only theoretically obtained, no actual tests between the two systems have been taken. There remains speed, which is equivalent to fluency. I think this is much more important than accuracy, for without ease there is no pleasure and without pleasure there is little real reading. Well, what is your claim for this point? Only a gain of six per cent. It comes to this, then, so far as I have been able to work it out, that the sacrifices are what I have stated, and the gain is problematic increase of speed..."