Why is the default terminal width 80 characters?

Question

80 seems to be the default in many different environments and I\'m looking for a technical or historical reason. It is common knowledge that lines of code shouldn\'t exceed 80 c

Answer 1

If I remember correctly the old dot matrix printers were only able to print 80 characters across. I am pretty sure my old commodore 64 and 128 had the same 80 characters, now that I think about it, I don't think the monitor could display more than 80 characters either

The LA30 was a 30 character/second dot matrix printer introduced in 1970 by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts. It printed 80 columns of uppercase-only 5x7 dot matrix characters across a unique-sized paper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix_printer