A display terminal that provides keyboard input and screen output but does not perform business data processing. Common in the days of minicomputers and mainframes, smart terminals supported more screen functions than the "dumb terminal," such as the ability to reverse the video (black on white) and display underlines. They also handled the more complex protocols of the mainframe and some minicomputers. See
dumb terminal,
3270 and
VT100.
Today's Smart Terminals
Today's version of the smart terminal is the "thin client," which may be similar to a smart terminal with limited processing capability, or it may be a regular PC running thin client software. See
thin client.