Dumb terminal

A Dumb terminal is any of a class of terminals one step above a glass tty[?]. Instead of simply displaying text on a screen, dumb terminals include simple commands ('escape sequences') for clearing the screen and positioning the cursor.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, a number of companies manufactured dumb terminals. The most common were DEC, Wyse, Televideo, IBM and Heath.

Today, most Telnet clients provide emulation of the most common dumb terminal -- the DEC VT100.

Smart terminals provide additional resources to perform local editing and simple processing.