Fleetwing wrote:

How much is she asking for it, assuming it's for sale? Not interested other than idle curiosity.

 

I don't think she was selling it, she had several really cool machines that I think were just show pieces.

I've seen many photos of a number of similar machines, both mechanical and electric, but have never come across one in person. 

​Typewriter manufacturing history is full of specialty machines that were custom ordered to fulfill a specific task, so typewriters such as these aren't really as odd as they appear to be on the surface. They only seem odd because they've been taken out of context. If you came across one of these sitting beside an identical model with a regular keyboard, in the offices of some tech company, you probably wouldn't give it much thought. Essentially, what you're looking at is an old-school solution to the need of extra characters specific to an industry, an option that most word processor users today take for granted.

And why make a typewriter with only ten special symbols? If you're going to do it, make it a little more universal -- one row for mathematical symbols, one for engineering, and so forth.