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As a result of the discussion the braillists all determined that they would attend the Louisville board meeting the following day even if they had to ride home on brake beams. A special sleeping car was reserved for them and the annual meeting at Louisville had a record attendance that year.

Regular business of the Louisville meeting was disposed of with the customary dullness that characterizes most annual board meetings. Finally, under new business, the motion for which everyone was waiting breathlessly was made, taking the form of a proposal that forty per cent of the government appropriation be expended on the publication of American braille books. The vote was a tie. This left it up to the chairman of the meeting, Colonel Andrew Cowan, a local businessman of very high repute, to cast the deciding vote. Mr. Huntoon implored him in a whisper to kill the motion. Colonel Cowan disappointed his New York Point friends by stating that the motion seemed like a reasonable request since forty per cent of the pupils represented by the superintendents were in schools which had officially adopted American braille. He cast the deciding vote in favor of the resolution, and one can easily imagine the chagrin of the New York Point members. From that time on, forty per cent of the federal appropriation went for American braille books until Revised braille completely supplanted both of the contending systems.

Meanwhile the blind people, who were the real sufferers as a result of the controversy, had become heartily disgusted with the fight going on between superintendents of schools for the blind, few of whom could read either system.

In 1901 the American Blind People's Higher Education and General Improvement Association at its Kansas City convention passed a resolution which read as follows, "That a committee be appointed to investigate the various forms of tactile print, and to labor for the adoption of some one universal system."

In 1902, pursuant to this resolution, the Tactile Print Investigating Commission was created, consisting of four members, and chaired by Ambrose M. Shotwell, a blind man who was braille printer of the Michigan School for the Blind and later braille printer and librarian of the Michigan Employment Institution for the Blind in Saginaw. A prominent member of the commission was John B. Curtis, also sightless, who was supervisor of classes for the blind in the Chicago Public Schools which operated a small braille printing shop.

The Tactile Print Investigating Commission, handicapped by lack of any funds with which to work, conducted a few tests to ascertain the relative legibility of letters having a few dots as compared with letters having many dots. It also made a few tests designed to determine the relative legibility of words containing letters of one and two dots in height and one and two dots in width. The number of subjects tested were too few to more than suggest conclusions which were later arrived at after testing several hundred readers.

Before the commission wound up its affairs it also endeavored unsuccessfully to get the British Braille Committee to cooperate with it. The principal achievement of the commission was that of focusing the interest of a larger number of thoughtful blind people upon the desirability of the adoption of a uniform type based upon scientifically demonstrated principles.

In 1905 the successor to the American Blind People's Higher Education and General Improvement Association, the American Association of Workers for the Blind, at its convention in Saginaw, Michigan received a letter from Charles W. Holmes, resident of Rock Island, Quebec, Canada, and President of the Alumni Association of Perkins Institution for the Blind, which is quoted in part because it expresses so well the feelings of thoughtful blind people at that time.

"I desire to ... present our views upon the great type question, which seems just now to be one of the most important and prominent before the consideration of the blind and their friends. The most lamentable fact in this connection is that we have at present five distinct codes of embossed print, and virtually subdivisions of some of them as well -- since some books are printed with, and some without contractions. In order to avail himself of the full range of literature (which at best is woefully limited) the blind reader must learn, and keep well up in, all these codes.... How long would our seeing friends stand for such a state of affairs in ink type? Imagine for a moment the ridiculous situation that would arise, if the daily papers published in Boston had an entirely different system of characters from those used by New York publishers, and that a Philadelphia man could not read either without special training, because his own city had adopted a third, as unlike the others as the Chinese characters are unlike the Roman.... What we need, and must have, and will have if we but make up our minds to it, and stand by each other, is an international, universal code of embossed type for all English-speaking countries.... Will not this association which is a mighty power in the affairs of the blind in this country, put its shoulder to the wheel and see to it that the word to quit is not given till the wheel moves?...