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\F1\CJuly 21, 1981
Mr. Masahiro Yamamoto
Computer System Research Laboratory
NEC Ltd.
33-7 Shiba Gochome
Minato-Ku, Tokyo 108, Japan

Dear Mr. Yamamoto:
\J
Congratulations on your article in Computer  Magazine! I was particularly
pleased to see  a published account of the LISP work, for I am interested
in reaching firms in Japan who are pursuing LISP-related endeavors.
In particular, I have been trying to reach someone within NEC for over a year
concerning LISP on the PC-8001. 
I have a version of LISP-machine LISP, running on
the Z-80, and  am interested in utilizing this system in the
educational areas using machines that can support LOGO-like graphics
interfaces. When the NEC personal machine was first announced, it seemed
like a perfect candidate; after initial conversations with people in Los
Angeles  California, I wrote a proposal (enclosed). That proposal
languished in California and Massachusetts, and repeated phone calls got
little response. Then I saw your article!

Much of what I want to say to you is in the attached proposal, but several
things have happened since that February date: the Santa Clara course
has completed successfully, and I expect to teach versions of the course
at San Jose Sate University in the spring and, with funds, three other
universities. The mentioned "computer faire" also was completed successfully:
over two-hundred people stayed five hours to hear what was to be a three-hour
LISP/Smalltalk/AI tutorial! I was amazed. Clearly, the interest is there.

Equally clear, the appropriate hosts for long-range LISP-based products
lie in the larger machines, and I'm pursuing that option now, but
for educational products, the cost of smaller machines may still make
8-bit products viable for a while. In that regard, the Z-800 could make
an elegant host for the multi-bank LISP I mentioned in the proposal.
Does NEC expect to second-source that chip?

In summary, then I'm still very interested in pursuing  LISP on NEC
equipment, either existing 
machines or future products. 
Do you feel there is an opportunity for a cooperative
effort between NEC and TLC? If not, could you perhaps direct me to
other Japanese corprations with strong LISP interests? For, another
important event has happened since the February letter: the publication
in the United States
of Servan-Schreiber's book \F3The World Challenge\F1. In it he
discusses the relationships between OPEC, computing technology, and Japan;
it occurs to me that now would be an exceptional time to offer the
educational community a LISP dialect having the attractive graphics of LOGO,
the class/message-passing notions of Smalltalk, and the mathematical
substance of LISP; this is the heart of the next version of TLC-LISP.
Such a language, complete with books, laboratory manuals,
an inexpensive machine, and tutoring system could do much to address the
problems mentioned in Servan-Schreiber's book.

I hope you find these ideas attractive, and I await your response.
Thank you for your attention.
\.
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Yours sincerely,


John R. Allen
18215 Bayview Dr.
Los Gatos Ca, 95030
(408) 353-3857

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