videopäätte

A videopääte, often translated as video terminal or video display terminal (VDT), was an electronic device used to interact with a computer. It typically consisted of a screen for displaying output and a keyboard for input. Unlike modern personal computers, videopäätte themselves did not perform computation. Instead, they were connected to a central computer, a mainframe or minicomputer, and relied on that machine to process data and generate the displayed information.

The primary function of a videopääte was to serve as a human-computer interface. Users would type commands or data on the keyboard, and the videopääte would transmit this information to the host computer. The computer would then process the request and send the results back to the videopääte for display on its screen. This allowed multiple users to access and work with a single powerful computer simultaneously, sharing its resources.

Early videopäätte were often "dumb terminals," meaning they had very limited local processing capabilities. They primarily functioned as input/output devices, displaying characters sent by the host. Later generations, sometimes referred to as "smart terminals," incorporated more local intelligence, allowing for features like limited data validation or editing before transmission to the host. The widespread adoption of personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s, with their integrated processing and display, gradually led to the decline of the dedicated videopääte in many computing environments.