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\F1\COctober 16, 1979

	

Dr. Toshiaki Kurokawa
Information Systems Laboratory
TOSHIBA R&D Center
Kawasaki 210 Japan


Dear Dr. Kurokawa:

\JThank you for your letter of August 31, 1979. I apologize for 
being so tardy in responding; however I left Hewlett-Packard several years
ago and your letter wasn't forwarded promptly.

Indeed, there will be a LISP Conference next year. Your letter came at just the
right time. I had been trying to interest the LISP community in this conference
since last December! Response had been very slow. After seeing the kinds of
LISP-related  activities that are  being pursued in your country it was clear
to me that the conference should go forward. I tried once again, this time
with success. 

I should realize by now that LISP people are quite difficult to organize;
I wrote \F5Anatomy of LISP\F1 because such a book was needed and no one else
would write it; I wrote a pro-LISP/anti-Pascal editorial for BYTE magazine
and guest-edited a special issue of BYTE on LISP because the personal computer
people were being indoctrinated into the Pascal way of thinking, and  
it was very important that they understand what LISP is about.
I have formed a LISP User's Group for the home-computer advocate, and
publish a small newsletter for them.
Now I have formed my own small company, The LISP Company
(T .(L . C)),  to produce LISP-related systems
for personal computers. We now have a version of the
MIT LISP Machine LISP available on the Z-80, and soon another
machine. Perhaps your people at TOSHIBA would find this
interesting? 

As the above indicates, I find LISP a very attractive language; I see this
conference as an excellent vehicle to widen and enlighten the general
computer  community/industry regarding the benefits  of LISP.

Thank you again for you encouragement.
\.
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Yours sincerely,



John R. Allen
18215 Bayview Dr.
Los Gatos Ca, 95030

Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab
Computer Science Dept.
Stanford University
Stanford, Ca 94305
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