The Naval Message Analyzer was developed to show that a distributed computerized message-analysis system could be built using the CODER (COmposite Document Expert!/extended/effective Retrieval) system, a testbed for artificial intelligence methods in Information Storage and Retrieval, as the foundation of the project. The Naval Message Analyzer reads messages contained in disk files and indexes them according to dates, locations and words. Words are used as indexes to documents according to headword entries in the Collins English Dictionary. Dates, sources and destinations are read from the header information as well as the body of each message. Header information is in one standard format, but other information is detected using clues within the text, and is further analyzed by expert modules. A database of world-knowledge is included as a repository of proper names for ships, cities, countries and abbreviations. A database maintenance facility is an integral part of the Naval Message Analyzer, so that facts can be added or changed as necessary. The system retrieves the closest matches, in descending order, to one or more ship names, locations, dates and keywords provided by the user. / Master of Science