Excerpt:
Typewriter patents date back to 1713, and the first typewriter proven to have worked was built by Pellegrino Turri in 1808 for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzono. Commercial production, however, began only with the "writing ball" of Danish pastor Malling Hansen (1870). This device looked rather like a pincushion. Nietzsche's mother and sister once gave him one for Christmas. He hated it.