Attempts to give the numerals their own distinct position in Braille are not new: the original 1829 specification by Louis Braille gave the numerals their own distinct symbols, with the modern digraph-based literary-braille approach mentioned as an optional fallback. However, after trying the system out in the classroom, the dashes used in the numerals—as well as several other rows of special characters—were found to be too difficult to distinguish from dot-pairs, and thus the typical digraph-based numerals became the official standard in 1837.