>Can't be destructive when paper is your display unit :). You could drive Foxplus like that, without a monitor, just Set Print On and then whatever you type, and any results that come, appear on the paper.
>
>So for compatibility's sake (as there were many computers tied to telex outputs and keyboards), they kept the old non-destructive backspace and added the new destructive one. An extensive list of these codes (and related stories) is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Standard_Code_for_Information_Interchange.

Thanks God we have monitors now :-)