Small spaces with large point character (Q1109366)

An open covering \({\mathcal U}\) of a metric space (X,\(\rho)\) is called uniform if there exists \(\epsilon >0\) such that for every \(x\in X\) there is \(U\in {\mathcal U}\) which contains the \(\epsilon\)-ball \(B_{\epsilon}(X)=\{y,\rho (X,y)<\epsilon \}\). By the well-known theorem of A. H. Stone each metric space is paracompact and hence each open covering \({\mathcal U}\) of (X,\(\rho)\) has an open locally finite refinement \({\mathcal V}\). The question, whether in Stone's theorem open coverings may be replaced by uniform ones (i.e. whether every uniform covering has a locally finite uniform refinement) was originally formulated by A. H. Stone [Q. J. Math. Oxf. II. Ser. 11, 105-115 (1960; Zbl 0096.374)] and is mentioned also in \textit{J. R. Isbell}'s book [Uniform spaces (1964; Zbl 0124.156)]. The answer to this question is clearly positive for any Euclidean space or more generally separable space. However, the question was answered negatively in several papers by examples which do not have this property. All those examples have large number of points. The aim of this note is to construct a relatively small space (smallest possible) giving a negative answer to Stone's question. The central notion of our paper is the notion of point character.