80x24 characters seems to be a very common default for terminal windows. This answer provides a very good historical reason as to why the width is 80 characters.
But why is the height commonly 24 (or 25) lines?
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3Save your history questions for next week :P. Too late now though: meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/…– DynamicMay 15, 2012 at 20:28
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380×25 is actually more common– vartecMay 15, 2012 at 20:34
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@vartec : Edited the question for either 24 or 25 lines.– hotpaw2May 15, 2012 at 20:37
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I don't know about 25 lines, but whenever I open PuTTY it defaults to 80x24.– TNDMay 15, 2012 at 20:39
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4Probably partly because 80x25 is just under 2K. Makes it easy to have a 2K screen buffer.– Gort the RobotMay 15, 2012 at 22:21
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2 Answers
Early terminals were built around the same cathode ray tubes that were used for televisions. In the 1960's and 1970's these were all 4:3 aspect ratio.
If the display needs to fit 80 characters across the width then given the aspect ratio of the standard characters which was taller than 3:4 (if I remember correctly) and allowing for a larger space between lines than between characters you get to fit 24 or 25 lines on the display.
I haven't done the exact maths because I can't remember (or find) the exact character aspect ratio or line spacing.
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1That depends on the bitmap used for the characters. I cannot find an image of the physical screen to see. Also note that 132 character widths were available.– user1249May 15, 2012 at 22:20
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1@ThorbjørnRavnAndersen - I'm having problems finding exact numbers too. If I remember correctly the aspect ratio of the characters used for the 132 character displays were different - thinner than the standard 80 character displays.– ChrisF ♦May 15, 2012 at 22:23
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@ThorbjørnRavnAndersen If it helps, I've got an 80x25 ASCII terminal from IBM, of which the 25th line is a status line. I had brightness turned down when I took it but if it helps, here's a photo. i.imgur.com/bU2Hd1X.jpg Jan 4, 2016 at 19:52
The height of the vt100 terminal.
Emulators get the best vt100 compatability at that size.
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6
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4Most likely a memory issue. They may have had 1 KB of memory and needed more than 24 bytes for variables.– user1249May 15, 2012 at 20:49
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1I cannot count. 2 KB.– user1249May 15, 2012 at 22:48