ANSI escape sequences are a standard for in-band signaling to control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on video text terminals and terminal emulators. Certain sequences of bytes, most starting with an ASCII escape character and a bracket character, are embedded into text. The terminal interprets these sequences as commands, rather than text to display verbatim.
The DEC VT100 video display terminal.
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and predated the use of a computer screen by decades. Starting in the mid-1970s with machines such as the Sphere 1, Sol-20, and Apple I, terminal circuitry began to be integrated into personal and workstation computer systems, with the computer handling character generation and outputting to a CRT display such as a computer monitor or, sometimes, a consumer TV.
A Teletype Model 33 ASR teleprinter, usable as a terminal
Closeup of an IBM 2741 printing terminal, which used a changeable Selectric "golfball" typing element and was faster than the earlier teletype machines
IBM 2260
ADM-3A