So DEC thought of this as a way to edit IBM cards but IBM didn't?
The implicit claim is that somehow the machines for manufacturing punch cards were reused for computer output and that is what terminals were trying to emulate. But surely there were more displays and non-card-sized printers?
Actually I was using Burroughs systems (in pre-VT52 days)
There certainly were non card size printers - but they scaled linearly with technology
But no we didn't repurpose card punches to be terminals, but we did need terminals to edit card images (fortran was 72 characters plus 8 digits of sequence numbers)
The implicit claim is that somehow the machines for manufacturing punch cards were reused for computer output and that is what terminals were trying to emulate. But surely there were more displays and non-card-sized printers?