Who Won the War of the Dots?

Blind people use Braille, a system of raised dots that allows them to read, a system invented by Frenchman Louis Braille who developed it in 1824. In 1829, he published “Procédé pour écrire les Paroles, la Musique et le Plain-chant au moyen de points” (“Method of Writing Words, Music and Plainsong by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them”). There were competing schemes throughout the 19th Century - American and British English, Boston Line Type, New York Point, Lucas, Moon and Kneass’s to name a few. Each had a unique form of letters, symbols and organization. In this, the whole thing paralleled the railroad industry which offered differing track gauges to everybody’s chagrin. Between the 1880s and 1919, Helen Keller and others of her generation, for example, had to know five or six systems to access the different books published in the US in varying forms of raised type. Finally, push came to shove.