In 1829, William Austin Burt patented a
machine called the "Typographer" which, in common with many other
early machines, is listed as the "first typewriter". The keyboard
remained the primary, most integrated computer peripheral well into the era of
personal computing until the introduction of the mouse as a consumer device in
1984.
By this time, text-only user interfaces
with sparse graphics gave way to comparatively graphics-rich icons on screen.
If computer keyboards existed 185-years-ago, this is what they might've looked
like.
