Definition of screen dump

The term "screen dump" refers to the process of capturing or saving all the information displayed on a computer screen at a specific moment. This process is also known as taking a "screenshot" or "screen capture." The origin of the term "screen dump" can be traced back to the early days of computer mainframes in the 1960s and 1970s. The mainframes used punched cards as the primary input device, and users would often request the output of a program to be printed on paper as a physical record of its results. As computing technology evolved, display screens replaced punched cards, making it possible to view the output directly on the screen. However, users still needed a way to save this information for future references. This is when screen dump terminals were introduced. A screen dump terminal worked by allowing the user to capture the screen's contents and save it to a secondary storage device, such as a magnetic tape or a punch card. The term "screen dump" was coined to describe this process, as it involved "dumping," or transferring, the contents of the screen into a secondary storage device. Over time, screen dump terminals became obsolete as personal computers with built-in screens and keyboard inputs became more popular, and screen capture software, that allowed users to take a "screenshot" using external and internal storage such as USBs, hard drives, or cloud storage, became widely available. In summary, the term "screen dump" comes from the earlier days of computing when screens were a secondary output method, and the user had to physically save the screen's contents to a separate storage device for future reference. The process essentially involved dumping the screen's contents into an external storage device.