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\F2\CARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
\CCOMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
\F0







							September 13, 1973





Dr. Anthony Ralston
Department of Computer Science
SUNY at Buffalo
4226 Ridge Lea Road
Buffalo, New York 14226


Dear Tony:

\J	Here at long last is a draft of an article on recursion.  It will be
supplemented by proper references and made a bit more concrete, but I would
like to get your general opinion of its suitability.

	With regard to getting an encyclopedia in the computer, I still think
it would be a great idea to do, but there is no-one now who wants to do the
work of getting it into the ARPA net.  When there are more display terminals
available that can be used for direct reading and there are more XGP quality
printers for getting copies, I think there will be more enthusiasm.

	As a start, I persuaded the editors of the SIGART newsletter to put
it on-line.  They have done so, but it is in the SRI-ARC NLS system which is
rather difficult to use.

	In a related project, we have connected the Associated Press national
wire into our computer, and a program sorts and files the stories by keyword
as they come in.  A user can get stories that contain Boolean combinations
of keywords and can arrange to be notified when stories meeting certain
conditions appear.  This program is quite popular at our lab and also at
other labs that can access it through the ARPA net.  It is used about 1000
times a month.

	If you or someone you know has some energy to put into an on-line
encyclopedia project, I have many ideas on the subject some of which are
sketched in the enclosed memos.\.



    							Sincerely yours,



							John McCarthy
							Professor of Computer Science
	      						Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory