VT100
computer terminal
The VT100 is a video terminal, introduced in August 1978 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was one of the first terminals to support ANSI escape codes for cursor control and other tasks, and added a number of extended codes for special features like controlling the status lights on the keyboard. This led to rapid uptake of the ANSI standard, which became the de facto standard for hardware video terminals and later terminal emulators.
The VT100 series, especially the VT102, was extremely successful in the market, and made DEC the leading terminal vendor at the time. The VT100 series was replaced by the VT200 series starting in 1983, which proved equally successful. Ultimately, over six million terminals in the VT series were sold, based largely on the success of the VT100.
Description
DEC's first video terminal was the VT05 (1970), succeeded by the VT50 (1974), and soon upgraded to the VT52 (1975). The VT52 featured a text display with 80 columns and 24 rows, bidirectional scrolling, and a custom control protocol that allowed the cursor to be moved about the screen. These "smart terminals" were a hit due both to their capabilities and to their ability to be run over inexpensive serial links, rather than custom proprietary connections as in the case of systems like the IBM 3270, which generally required expensive controllers for distributed applications. In contrast, "dumb terminals" or "glass teletypes" like the ADM-3 (1975) lacked advanced features such as full cursor addressability, and competed mostly on lowest possible hardware cost.
The public source identifies “VT100” as computer terminal. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around VT100, computer and terminal.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q614302. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1983, 1970 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “VT100” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.