From: utzoo!decvax!cca!mclure@SRI-UNIX@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.chess
Title: Belle comes back
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.1679
Posted: Tue Jun  8 12:44:00 1982
Received: Wed Jun  9 01:42:40 1982

Mail-From: ARPANET host SRI-AI received by CMU-10A at 8-Jun-82 12:35:21-EDT
Date:  8 Jun 1982 0931-PDT
From: Mark Stickel 
Subject: Update on Belle
To: mark.sherman at CMU-10A
cc: Stickel at SRI-AI
Remailed-To: INFO-Cobol at MIT-MC
Remailed-From: Mark.Sherman at CMU-10A
Remailed-Date: Tuesday,  8 June 1982 1355-EDT
Via:  Mit-Mc.ArpaNet; 8 Jun 82 11:06-PDT

In June 6, 1982 S.F. Chronicle:

		Belle the Chess Whiz Leaving U.S. Custody

The world's champion chess computer -- confiscated by the government to keep
it out of Soviet hands -- is being returned to its creator, U.S. Customs
Service officials said yesterday.

Federal agents impounded the computer -- nicknamed Belle by its ATT Bell
Laboratories creator, Kenneth Thompson -- at New York's John F. Kennedy
International Airport last month after they found it had no export license
for shipment to Moscow.

Thompson said he never intended to sell Belle to the Russians -- only to
display it at a chess exhibition in Moscow -- and the whole episode was
unnecessary.

Bell Labs paid a $600 fine a week ago, Thompson said, and Customs Service
spokesman Lou Gerig said yesterday the device would be returned soon.

Belle beat every other chess computer at the most recent world championship
at Linz, Austria, in 1980.
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