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September 9* 1968

Daniel G. BobrowVice PresidentInformation Science DivisionBolt Beranek and Newman Inc.

U Cambridge, Mass. 02138Dear Dan:

V_y Please excuse the delay in answering your post-IFIP letter. First of all, I wantto expressmy great appreciation to you for the very nice things you had to say a-

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bout my IFIP Paper, both in Edinburgh and in your letter. Your comments made' mefeel good. lam enclosing a copy of the IFIP Paper for .you. If you need morecopies, please let me know.

yNext: the question of the short paper about DENDRAL for your new volume. Thereis no such thing currently in existence which -Ties your need. To be frank,the fact that this program is written in LISP rather than in some other list pro-

—cessin* language is viewed by us as a matter of secondary importance. We use LISP| primarily for reasons of local expertise and support. The passenger, not the ye-

UJ hide, is what is important to us.There are three ways I could provide you with your short paper

1. I could write one de novo.2. I could rewiite embroider the section on DENDRAL in the enclosed IFIP Paper.

¥3. I could rewrite and embroider a 1,000 word paper, published in the Proceedingsof the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, held last January.By now this report is out of date but it could be rewritten.

There are other possibilities, you could wait a month or two while I write a paperfor the AI Conference at Case Western Reserve University, and then use that paper.Alternatively, you could ask Georgia Sutherland to write up a paper with a LISPorientation toward the subject matte.; .One thing you could do for us would be to define more clearly what kind of paperyou want, not only its orientation but its length. Let me hear from you on thesematters.

Next subject: EPAM. ..Many months ago, I asked a couple of graduate students tomake a running version of your EPAM in LISP on our system. They and I working together eventually came to what we believe to be a complete understanding of yourprogram and what it was doing. We then proceeded to rewrite portions of it to

f.** Daniel G. BobrowB September 9* 1968

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bring it back into line with what I thought the EPAM model should do. The model,therefore, is somewhat different from yours. When the graduate students finishedtheir project, we had a running EPAM here at Stanford. Since that time, I havenot gotten around to exercising the model again: perhaps it will no longer run inthe system. Perhaps the DEC tape has in the interim acquired enough dust so thatit can no longer be ready by the machine. I don't know. The reason for producinga running EPAM-3 model was to provide a basis for certain extensions I wanted tomake (EPAM kl) to begin to deal with the problems of associative storage and re-trieval in human long term associative memory. Because of all of the the acti-vity on the DENDRAL project, I have not yet been able to turn my attention to thisinteresting subject. So for all intents and purposes, EPAM is dormant at Stanford.Sorry about that J

U In your letter you mentioned that you were going to visit California in December.What are the dates? I hope that I will not miss you. Sometime around the 17thor lBth of December, I will have to take off for a conference in Puerto Rico and

ywill probably spend sometime during the Christmas Holidays vacationing in theCarribean. However, if we miss each other there will be people around here whocan fill you in on the latest DENDRAL progress.

I Once again, thanks very much for your kind comments on the IFIP Paper.

Sincerely,

. Edward A. Feigenbaum]\ Associate Professor of Computer Science

EAF/rshEnclosure

BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN mcCON S U

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CAM

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3 88 5 0

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LTING DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

50 MOULTON STRE

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 021

TELEPHONE (617) 491-18

13 September 1968

Prof. Edward A. FeigenbaumComputer Science Dept.Stanford UniversityStanford, California 9^305Dear Ed:

Just a note to remind you that you were goingto upgrade a DENDRAL paper for inclusion InVolume II of "LISP, Its Operation and Application."

It would be nice if you could get it to me soon.

Thanks .Cordially,

'St-mmJDaniel G. BobrowVice PresidentInformation Science Division

DGB : rmd

D. G. BOBROW

D G E NEW

YORK CHICAGO LOS ANGEL