Editing Computer monitor (section)

==History==
Early electronic computer [[front panel]]s were fitted with an array of light bulbs where the state of each particular bulb would indicate the on/off state of a particular register bit inside the computer. This allowed the engineers operating the computer to monitor the internal state of the machine, so this panel of lights came to be known as the 'monitor'. As early monitors were only capable of displaying a very limited amount of information and were very transient, they were rarely considered for program output. Instead, a [[line printer]] was the primary output device, while the monitor was limited to keeping track of the program's operation.<ref>{{Cite web|title=How Computers Work: Input and Output|url=https://homepage.cs.uri.edu/faculty/wolfe/book/Readings/Reading06.htm|website=homepage.cs.uri.edu|access-date=2020-05-29}}</ref>

Computer monitors were formerly known as '''visual display units''' ('''VDU'''), particularly in British English.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/visual-display-unit |title=Visual display unit |work=Collins English Dictionary |publisher=HarperCollins |accessdate=2022-10-09}}</ref> This term mostly fell out of use by the 1990s.