Point Made

But life is not a game. Sure, there are winners and losers, but the stakes are far higher than we might realize. Just ask us At Bernstein. Bernstein was born in the Ukraine in a teen eighty two, back when his hometown was part of the Russian Empire. In nineteen o six, he received his doctorate in law from Heidelberg University and became a practicing financial lawyer. Shortly after that, Bernstein saw great success in his legal career, earning a

comfortable living for himself and his family. Unfortunately, as he would come to learn several times in his life, considerable gains were often followed by immense losses, but it wasn't his fault. He wasn't a gambler and he didn't play the stock markets, although he did enjoy the occasional game chess. To be specific, he picked it up in law school and found that he had a talent for it. One year after he started playing, he was entering competitions all

over Europe. In June of nineteen o two, his win at the General Chess Federation of Berlin earned him a master title, kicking off a spree of tournaments with varying results. Sometimes he placed first or second, other times he tied for third or fourth. Yet the more he played, the more of a reputation he built for himself, and he was also outspoken against certain players, such as Jose Capablanca,

who beat him several times over the years. But there was something fascinating about this up and coming wonder kid. Chess champions and enthusiasts alike spook highly of him, and his name often appeared on high profile lists, although not

always in a good way. The Bolshevik Revolution of nineteen seventeen brought a lot of turmoil to Russia, with Lennon's Red Army overthrowing the government in setting up its own Capitalists and their enablers were rounded up for contributing to the plight of the workers, and among them was as Bernstein. Ossip wasn't a banker, but as a financial lawyer, he certainly helped them get richer, oftentimes on the backs of

the most vulnerable. He was practicing in Odessa, Ukraine, when he was arrested by the Bolshevik's secret police in nineteen eighteen. There was no trial or due process. Many people who were apprehended were automatically sentenced to death by firing squad, and Ossip was no exception. On the day of his execution, he was lined up with the other prisoners, waiting for the bullet that would end his life. Instead, he heard a superior officer ask one of his men for the

list of offenders before him. As the officers skimmed the list of names, the man recognized Bernstein and asked him if he was the chess champion he had read about. Bernstein said yes, he was not convinced. The officer demanded proof, but no identification would tell him what he wanted to know. He needed to see the man in action, so he gave him an ultimatum if he won the game, he would be free to go, and if he lost or drew the match, he would be shot with the others. Quietly,

Bernstein agreed. The two men sat across from each other as the game was set up. Ponds, knights, and rooks flew across the board. The commanding officer may have been a chess aficionado, but he wasn't much of a player, and Bernstein was able to best him in a handful of moves, and the officer, true to his word, leased him right then and there. Satisfied with having played against a real chess master, Bernstein and his family immediately fled Ukraine to Paris to start their lives over far from

the dangers at home. Austin Bernstein went back to playing chess, becoming a legend of the game by the end of his life in nineteen sixty two. However, nothing would ever measure up against the match he played on that day that he was scheduled to be executed. He had played the game of his life, quite literally, and survived, the perfect embodiment of that famous word checkmate. Isador had a problem.

So many of the texts he was using needed to be read out loud, but the written word on a page, well, it doesn't really tell you how the words should sound, and Isadore wanted to change that. You see, he was from Spain, but he was also well traveled. He had met people from all around Europe and the Mediterranean, and he knew just how important it was to communicate clearly. But not everyone he met shared the same culture, the same habits, or the same ways of talking, let alone

the same language or way of reading. And even if they could read the same language, it was a rare thing for two people with different backgrounds to see things the same way. Isador wanted to smooth some of that out. He wanted to be sure that anyone, just by reading a written page could tell what it was really supposed to mean. Now he wasn't the first person to think about this, of course, but he may just be the first one to think about it the hardest and to

try and come up with a solution. So is a Door started to experiment, and he had some good ideas too. He started to come up with a new series of complex symbols to appear around a writer's letter that could guide someone who was reading the words, and he thought about the marks already on the page around the letters. First, he watched the way that other Spanish writers did things like market quotation. Some of what they did made sense to him. Some of it, though, seemed a little fussy,

a little too or nate. Then there were too many flourishes before they got to the point. Complexity wasn't what he actually wanted. If readers from all over Spain and beyond were going to be able to follow the directions, he wanted to actually have it be simple, elegant, not or nate would be the rule. So that's when Isador looked to history. Like many other writers in Europe, he looked back to Greece. There he picked up on some ideas from the writer Aristophanes and the simple idea he

had developed. It wasn't waves and flourishes that he had used to mark the context of words. Instead, he used a simple system of three dots. They marched along with the letters and marked their meaning by where they were placed, one at the top of the line, one in the middle, and one at the bottom. It was just the thing. Armed with that old method is a door set out to give it a new spin. Now in ancient Greek texts, the idea had been that these dots would guide someone

reading the texts out loud. Isadore was more interested in guiding someone who was reading the text quietly to themselves. But the point remained. If everyone could agree on the meaning of a few simple marks, it could help readers follow the tone and rhythm of the written word. So Isador worked to spread his revival of the Greek thoughts. He included a description of his system in a book

he called the Etymologies. Fortunately for the spread of his ideas, at least it proved popular, and it quickly spread out from Spain, and even long after Isadore was gone, people were still reading and studying his work, including what he had to say about language and what he had to say about writing it. His book became the standard text for teaching new writers in country after country, generation after generation,

and those little dots they stuck around. In fact, they even became a standard way of marking writing from one language to another. They endured for so long, in fact, that we're still using them today in English, even if they've changed slightly. They've moved around the page a little bit, but they're more or less doing what Isador thought they should showing the breaks between parts of sentences to let readers know where the writer intended one idea to stop

and another to begin. Because those three dots, since Isador of Seville invented them in the seventh century, they became three of the marks we know today as punctuation, the colon, the period, and the comma. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by

me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,