The VT52 featured a text display with 80 columns and 24 rows, bidirectional scrolling, and a custom control protocol that allowed the cursor to be moved about the screen.

These "smart terminals" were a hit due both to their capabilities and to their ability to be run over inexpensive serial links, rather than custom proprietary connections as in the case of systems like the IBM 3270, which generally required expensive controllers for distributed applications.

In contrast, "dumb terminals" or "glass teletypes" like the ADM-3 (1975) lacked advanced features such as full cursor addressability, and competed mostly on lowest possible hardware cost.

Unlike the VT50/52's proprietary cursor control language, the VT100 was based on the newly emerging ANSI X3.64 standard for command codes.

The introduction of low-cost microprocessors and the ever-falling cost of computer memory offered greatly expanded capabilities, and the VT100 used the new Intel 8080 as its internal processor.

The VT100 also introduced an additional box-drawing character set containing various pseudographics that allowed the drawing of on-screen forms.

Options could be added to the terminal to support an external printer, additional graphic renditions, and more character memory.

[7] The VT100 form factor left significant physical space in the case for expansion, and DEC used this to produce several all-in-one stand-alone minicomputer systems.

The VT278 (DECmate) added a small PDP-8 processor, allowing the terminal to run Digital's WPS-8 word processing software.