---
title: "Robert B. Irwin"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Robert B. Irwin"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-08-22T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["War of the Dots","New York Point","American Foundation for the Blind","Helen Keller","braille standards war"]
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
---


Longtime executive director of the American Foundation for the Blind, blind himself from childhood, whose 1955 memoir *As I Saw It* is the primary eyewitness account of the American "War of the Dots" — the decades-long US contest between Braille, New York Point, and Modified American Braille that ran from 1871 to 1932. Matters to this vault as the single named source underlying its richest institutional detail on that war: which specific schools adopted which code and when, and the social cost — colleagues who "refused to sit next to him at the luncheon table" — of a superintendent switching sides.

## References
- [[claim-1871-1932-braille-standards-war-fought-institution-by-institution-not-fixed-lines]]
- [[claim-nemeth-ueb-split-is-a-notation-convention-not-a-competing-script-dispute]]
- [[claim-war-of-the-dots-competing-braille-systems-1829-1932]]
- Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-22-do-current-us-state-level-nemeth-vs-ueb.md