00100	                         STANFORD UNIVERSITY
00200	                     COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
00300	
00400	
00500	                          January 30, 1973
00600	
01100	
01200	
01300	
01400	
01500	
01600	
01700	
01800	Dr. L.G. Roberts	
01900	Advanced Research Projects Agency	
02000	1400 Wilson Boulevard	
02100	Arlington, Virginia  22202	
02200	
02300	Dear Larry:
02400	
02500		Enclosed is a report from Information  International  that  I
02600	think  will  interest you.  In my opinion it indicates that character
02700	reading for non-OCR fonts is still in the R&D  phase,  that  III  has
02800	made  reasonable  progress,  but they are unlikely to have commercial
02900	success, because the market isn't  there  yet  for  large  text  data
03000	bases.
03100	
03200		I  think the Defense Department will have a considerable need
03300	for massive conversion of data  files  to  computer  form  and  their
03400	readability  at  a  large  number of installations, and therefore the
03500	Network should include a capability for character reading as well  as
03600	for  the storage and readout of large files.  As I undertook to do at
03700	the Principal Investigator's  meeting,  I  shall  have  some  general
03800	proposals later.
03900	
04000		In   the  mean  time,  I  think  that  ARPA  should  consider
04100	supporting the III work with a research contract and/or putting their
04200	character  reading  facility  on  the  network  even with its present
04300	capability.
04400	
04500						Sincerely yours,
04600	
04700	
04800	
04900						John McCarthy
05000	
05100	
05200	cc. A.L. Fenaughty
05300