00100	                     COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
00200	                         STANFORD UNIVERSITY
00300	
00400	                            June 5, 1972
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01600	Mr. Paul Finch
01700	Associated Press
01800	Room 318, Fox Plaza
01900	9th & Market Streets
02000	San Francisco, California  94102
02100	
02200	Dear Mr. Finch:
02300	
02400		The Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is
02500	starting a research project aimed  at  determining  what  information
02600	services  would  be  useful  in  the home and in such institutions as
02700	universities.   Experiments in this direction  will  be  carried  out
02800	using  our  time-shared  PDP-10  computer  system.   This computer is
02900	mainly being used in research  in  computer  vision  and  control  of
03000	artificial arms and other topics in artificial intelligence, but some
03100	extra computer capacity is available.
03200	
03300		One of our planned experiments  involves  connecting  a  news
03400	wire  to  the  computer.   The computer would store 24 hours worth of
03500	news, sorted by categories.   Any user of our  system,  and  we  have
03600	about  40  keyboard  and  display consoles, could ask for news on any
03700	topic of interest to him.  The  experiment  involves  developing  the
03800	techniques for storing and retrieving the information and determining
03900	what news services are of use.
04000	
04100		At present, the project is supported by  a  general  computer
04200	science  research  grant  that  I received from a foundation, but our
04300	intention is to ask for National  Science  Foundation  support.   The
04400	project  will  certainly  continue  through  the  summer and probably
04500	through next  year.    All  results  will  be  published  and  freely
04600	available.
04700	
04800		The most suitable news service for our purposes appears to be
04900	unjustified, upper and lower case form of the A wire from  Associated
05000	Press.   We  will  not  require  the  teletype itself since we plan a
05100	direct connection  into  the  computer  for  which  we  will  do  the
05200	necessary hardware work.
05300	
05400		We would like to proceed as soon as you can quote us a price.
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05600	
05700					Sincerely yours,
05800	
05900	
06000					John McCarthy
06100					Professor of Computer Science
06200					Director, Artifical Intelligence Lab
06300	
06400	P.S.  As  I shall be away until June 20, any questions that arise can
06500	be taken up with Mr. Lester Earnest, the  Executive  Officer  of  the
06600	Laboratory  who  can be reached at (415)321-2300 x4202.  He will also
06700	get the purchase order started.