Ah, I'm old enough to remember these guys - an IBM relic from the early 1980s, I'd guess. Talking about the importance of design nowadays, this buddy is just far out, like quite a few of its IBM terminal siblings of that vintage. A $30 microwave oven available at WalMart today probably has more aesthetic properties designed into it. With that said, the facts remain that not even the sturdiest engineer would ever design something like this without a cause. Puzzling indeed....

A probably not too far-off guess is that there was at least one S/3x machine around here at that age...