The place that had it isn't local. It's was in San Francisco, and I'm back home in Canada. 

It was a more contemporary looking typewriter I think - when you mentioned memory, it makes me think that's how they must have done it - but it was being held back, and each keystroke advanced the message one character forward.

I'll see if I can dig up more info on it. The typewriter looked old, but not early - mid 1900's old. Might have been post 1980.

Thanks again for all the help! 

Or you could completley rebuild the typewriter....

Years ago I worked for a company as a dictaphone typist.  I think at the time we were using Wang.  But, there was a typewriter in the office used for certain letters that was programmed with numerous letters.  The typist would put the paper in, type the date and inside address, press or enter a code and it would type the text as it was programmed.  Why they had this I don't know when 6 typists were generating letters using Wang.  I'm thinking that on word processing typewriters at the time you could do this.  Looked like an electric typewriter.  This was in the 1980s.  Reminds me of mass mailing used on the computer, where you have a form letter and codes are entered in a form letter pulling the name and addresses any other information needed in field from a data base that the typist generates.  Then once all is done, hundreds of letters are printed with different names and addresses.  Hard for me to explain  its been a while.  Anyways, that typewriter or electric typewriter basically did the same, but it had several letters programmed into it so that once that code was entered, the typewriter would type by itself, only 1 page.  In other words, the typist would have to stand there and put another piece into the typewriter if there was a second page, but I don't believe it was set up for more than one page.  I wish I could remember the name of that typewriter, but I'm assuming it was a word processor.  You may be able to purchase a word processing electronic typewriter where it would store so many words, I have seen some online.  Once stored, you would enter the code and it would print out your text.  Like on a Brother Electronic, there is a code to type out a demonstration, same concept.