It types very well if I do my part. Its a bit of relearning after typing on nothing but computer keyboards and laptops for so long. Nice, consistent taps are coming!  And of course I did the "why isn't it typing?" thing until I moved the ribbon selector off of the stencil setting.  lol  The only think missing is the manual and the brushes. But I would imagine they aren't too hard to find. 

 

There was a lot of co-operation between Japy and Hermes.  Most of Japy's machines were licence-built Hermes.  Even a full-size office typewriter which was sold as the Beaucourt Style.  The outside appearance was nothing like a Hermes Ambassador - it even had a lock for the keyboard so that the typist could lock it up and take the key with her - but inside the casing it was an Ambassador !  The only exception was Japy/Beaucourt's lightweight portable which wasn't a Hermes Baby as one might expect, but a licence built Swissa.  Even this was adapted to take the same ribbon spool as the Hermes.  Hermes finally bought Japy and it became the factory which made the 3000.

Ah yes, Brazil.  Another interesting tale.  When Olivetti took Hermes over, they ended up with that factory in their empire.  They used the factory to put the 'works' of the Hermes Baby (by now very diluted in quality from the original) in a casing that looked remarkably like the Olympia Traveller and sold it as the Olivetti Tropical.  The ribbon carrier spindles were made much thicker so that it would take a standard Olivetti ribbon.  How they didn't get sued by Olympia for making an external clone of their machine is anyone's guess !

Quite so, but even then (to the untrained eye) they look alike.  Even the snap-over carry case is the same shape although they do not interchange due to slight dimensional differences !  By the way, although I am sure that you might have guessed, the genuine Olympia is streets ahead of the 'Tropical' - even though the 'Tropical' is based on the Hermes Baby which was in turn the original and best 'flat portable'.