Mechanical typewriters have different physical mechanisms to feed forward a line or make the carriage return. I think it doesn't turtle much further back than that.
Well around the time of the first typewriters (late 19th century) there where mechanical typesetters, automating the laborious task of typesetting for the printing press. Of course the mechanics of printing where different but as far as I know this is the source of the "keyboard with buttons" type interface for producing literature.