Hi Martin, Yes, I had heard of it. Shortly after I moved to Bloomington someone told me about the War of the Dots, and I came across a good summary of why the different methods of braille were fought over and chosen here in the uS: http://www.afb.org/warofthedots/book.asp
I have never seen New Your Point, though. It's nifty you got to. <smile> Mary -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Martin G. McCormick Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2014 3:57 PM To: Just Chat; Where Anything Goes ... Almost! Subject: Have you Heard of New York Point? Hey, folks, A few days ago, I was talking to Beverly about a strange experience I remember from high school in 1968. I took a Summer School course that year as my first public high school course of the eleventh grade. It was an American History class consisting of history after the Civil War and the teacher was excellent. We had to take a test, one day, and the teacher was going to have to give me the test at another time so he said that he had something special for me to look at while everybody else was testing. It was a magazine from the school library that had been there since 1933 and, at first glance it looked like your average Braille magazine. It was the "Christian Record" magazine which used to come out in Braille and Talking Book formats. I began to examine it as the others took their tests and immediately realized that something was very odd. The teacher then told me that it was written in New York Point. It was totally illegible, like some foreign language. I started with the upper right corners of the pages to see if I could figure out some sort of pattern as what was there was most likely page numbers. It looked like Braille turned sideways and there seemed to be 4 horizontal dots in some of the characters. Fast-forward to 2014 and I was admittedly killing some time at work like I am now so I got on wikipedia and looked up New York Point or NYP as the article refers to it as. No wonder it looked like Braille turned sideways. It certainly isn't Braille, but it was built around a double row of 8 dots. Basically what you are looking at is like an 8-dot Braille Cell turned on it's side. Like Braille, there wre contractions and a number sign. The Wikipedia article said that it was developed by William Bell of the New York School for the Blind in 1868 and was a competitor to Braille between 1868 and 1918. That 50-year period was referred to as "the war of the dots" and large groups of blind people in the United States grew up learning either Braille or NYP. There were advantages to both but apparently NYP had real problems with capitalization issues and English Braille finally won out in 1918 as the national Standard for the United States for blind literacy. I remember thanking the teacher for his efforts. I had never before seen anything but Braille though I was vaguely aware that other systems had existed at one time so this turned out to be more educational than one might think. Gee. I wonder if that old "Christian Record" magazine is still sitting on a shelf somewhere in the High School Library at Hot Springs High School in Arkansas? The actual school building was in it's last Summer as a high school building as a shiny new high school was being built not far from our house. Anyway, something made me think of that New York Point Magazine so I decided to look up the topic in wikipedia and the rest of you might find it interesting. There probably were blind people in the country in that time period who learned to read both systems. New York Point also had music notation and embossing machines that were similar to Braille writers but we can't call them that. There was some sort of a 12-key typewriter-like device and I imagine a slate and stylus that would have looked really weird in today's world. Martin ======================================== The Just-chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/just-chat> You can find an archive of all messages posted to the just-chat group at either of the following: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/just-chat/index.html> or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> You may subscribe with your RSS reader at the following URL: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> --------------------------------------- ======================================== The Just-chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/just-chat> You can find an archive of all messages posted to the just-chat group at either of the following: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/just-chat/index.html> or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> You may subscribe with your RSS reader at the following URL: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
