In the days before desktop publishing. I can’t imagine having to set this in hot lead or moveable type.
It’s all etaoin shrdlu to me…
The Old Wolf has spoken.
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Playing in the World Game 
Shut your Pi Chute! Leave Etaoin Shrdlu out of this, he’d have a squirt if he tried to set this disaster on a Linotype! (Mind your leg! Molten Lead!) It would be like a scene out of “The Matrices”
If you were trying to set a whole textbook like this, the simplest way would be to typeset all the words and figures, draw in the symbols & lines freehand, and send it to the Photo department to make a photo-etched Cut of the whole page.
I got into printing at the point where Photo-Setting was just taking over, thankfully – before that you would set the individual blocks of text and use 36 and 48-point fonts to get the big brackets, then run it through the Waxer and paste it all up like a Ransom Note. Photograph, strip, then burn an Offset plate.