This investigation of machine processing of picto rial data is based on the premise that people can recognize visual objects and describe them well enough so that other individuals can recognize the object from the description. Given a system of linguistic communi cation between a person and a digital computer, and given that the computer possesses adequate perceptual machinery, many currently refractory problems in pictorial data processing would be open to solution. This paper describes a

more »

... uter system which can perceive a limited class of graphical objects, create linguistic descriptions for the objects, and classify objects by comparison with a reference set of descrip tions as might be produced in normal human communic ation.