ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1976, while trying to decide on which computer science graduate school to attend, we (John Laird and Paul Rosenbloom) independently visited the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. We were both interested in AI as our field of study, so we naturally met with Allen Newell. Newell was fully immersed in production systems at the time, and was in the process of starting the Instructable Production System project. His boundless enthusiasm was infectious, and we decided independently—we did not meet each other until the first day of graduate school—to attend CMU and work with Newell. That was undoubtably the best decision of our professional careers.
