Hunt and Peck

This item at io9 offers a pictoral history of the typewriter, from its earliest concepts up through the first versions of computerized word processors.

We're so used to the keyboard now it seems like it's the only possible way to do things (although there are probably more efficient setups than the QWERTY arrangement). But as the "typing ball" shown below indicates, the choice was not necessarily so obvious from the beginning.

It would be interesting to see what might have happened had the format remained closer to this instead of the rectangular rows of keys we use now.