I was reading an article about a word-processor type device and ran across a mention of the typewriter used by Friedrich Nietzsche; the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball:
Nietzsche, the article said, believed that the device used to put words to paper would influence the writing. This idea, and the reference to odd and primitive typewriters, made me think of the film "Naked Lunch", in which the William S. Burroughs character uses a variety of typewriters, and seem to also be of the opinion that the artifact alters the writer's art.
But the design of the odd typewriter made me think of another nineteenth century device; the psychograph, which the pseudoscience of phrenology believed could be used to analyze the subject's personality:
In compliment to Nietzsche's idea of the machine affecting the operation of the brain, this machine was supposed to be affected by the shape of the brain, to provide measurements by which the phrenologist could determine the operation of the brain.
And by a weird coincidence, the machines resemble each other in that both feature a dome supporting an array of pins that move back and forth relative to a central point.
