WT/78 Word Terminal
Digital Equipment Corporation

WT/78 Word Terminal
Digital Equipment Corporation

The WT/78 Word Terminal shows its VT52 heritage from the general design, but the keyboard was custom designed to support "word processing": color coded keys with fixed functions like cut, paste, insert page, etc. The terminal we have in the collection contained a PDP-8 microcomputer and was paired with a table that held two 8-inch floppy disk drives. (The generic version of this configuration was called a VT78).

This general design: dedicated keyboard, PDP-8 microcomputer, specialized software (OS/8 plus the WPS application: WPS-8) would eventually morph into the DECmate series of word processing computers in the early 1980s.

Digital Equipment Corporation

c.1972

2023.5

Plastic case 14 x 16 x 18 inches
Screen 11'

Good

SU13-3