IP: Vax in a suitcase -- maybe a reporting error or does the NYT know something I dont know :-)

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/deal/1031on_this_day.html

The Business of Keeping Up to Date 

By CLYDE H. FARNSWORTH


WASHINGTON -- Information is money, or so goes one of the axioms of Wall Street. Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, 
after years as a commodity and stock trader, has found that in Washington information is power as well. 
One result is that he never goes anywhere without a portable computer terminal, the size of a tote bag, that can be 
plugged by telephone hookup into the Treasury's Executive Information System. 
This is a microchip marvel of ''menus'' offering foreign exchange and other market prices; brief accounts of the latest 
news from Tokyo, Bonn, Moscow and more out-of- the-way places, and other specialized, even classified, data that can be 
called up on the screen when the right combination of keys is punched. 

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last week, Mr. Regan's friendly computer, marked Digital Equipment Vax, provided the fastest 
and easiest way to find out what was happening not only to the dollar but to the marines on Grenada and in Beirut. 

Like a vacuum cleaner, the Treasury scoops up facts and figures from around the world 24 hours a day to support a 
variety of the housekeeping chores it performs, ranging from managing the nation's debt and ready cash to collecting 
its taxes and tariffs. 
'Treasury Never Sleeps'