PLATO Terminal Screen

PLATO端末の画面 / 1972–1980s / Style / Platform Screen Languages

PLATO was the computer-assisted teaching system started at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s under Donald Bitzer, and its screen is a style in its own right. It ran on plasma flat panels with touch input, and the TUTOR language placed text and drawing by coordinate rather than by line flow, so a lesson was assembled straight onto the surface. Its notes files, private messages and multiplayer games set the shape of later online screens.

Text and line drawing glowing in a single orange on a black panel / Characters placed by coordinate rather than by line flow, cutting into the middle of a drawing / Text and graphics sharing one surface, with no frames dividing the regions / Questions answered by touching the screen itself

PLATO Terminal Screen — Plasma display of a PLATO V terminal, 1981 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 — Plasma display of a PLATO V terminal, 1981 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 ／ PLATO screen of a fractional distillation simulation — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 US ／ PLATO V terminal (Living Computer Museum), photographed 2018 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0

PLATO Terminal Screen — PLATO screen of a fractional distillation simulation — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 US — Plasma display of a PLATO V terminal, 1981 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 ／ PLATO screen of a fractional distillation simulation — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 US ／ PLATO V terminal (Living Computer Museum), photographed 2018 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: Laying out a learning or operations screen where one colour carries both diagram and text on a single plane · Making screens or footage that portray the earliest online communities
Type: One monospaced face only, with no weight contrast and at most two sizes.
Composition: Place text at chosen coordinates instead of flowing lines, and separate areas with empty space rather than frames.
Material: Black ground, one glowing orange and no midtones, with the density of dots and strokes carrying the tone.
Caution: Adding scanlines and bloom to make it feel like a cathode ray tube erases the one thing that defined this screen, a flat plasma panel that glows without smearing.
Further study: where on the screen the TUTOR at and arrow commands placed text / the posting screen PLATO Notes created in 1972 / the emoticons and movement effects Bruce Parrello spread

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