alt Hacker NewsKeep going further back, we had thin client terminals (not sure of the terminology, this was just before my time - I remember using them to look for books at our town library when I was a kid, green or orange text on a black screen, no mouse).
Keep going further back, we had thin client terminals (not sure of the terminology, this was just before my time - I remember using them to look for books at our town library when I was a kid, green or orange text on a black screen, no mouse).
"Terminal" will do. These were text user interface (TUI) based browsers accessing a remote database, before web browsers appeared (or even the web itself). Fixed, very limited feature set, talking to database over plain LAN, a dedicated phone line or similar.
Possibly not even that: just a dumb terminal sending keystrokes & displaying text returned by the server.
Setups like this have been around almost as long as computers exist.
I recall that these replaced library catalogs in the form of drawers full of cards. Each card representing a book located elsewhere in the library (or available upon request from a central location). Man I'm old...