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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Voicewriter Screen (Computer Monitor)  
  A screen that displays characters.  

This is a very early description of what came to be called a computer monitor or VDU - visual display unit.

Road stared dully at the words which glowed on the voicewriter screen, his hand hovering over the SEND button of his telefax.
Technovelgy from Granny Won't Knit, by Theodore Sturgeon.
Published by Galaxy in 1954
Additional resources -

As far as I know, this predates the development of computer monitors by some years. In 1954, the closest to a display for a computer was a teletype - basically a typewriter connected to the computer which printed results. In the early 1960's engineers created the "glass teletype" - an obviously superior idea (which Sturgeon seemed to have had a decade earlier).

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Granny Won't Knit
  More Ideas and Technology by Theodore Sturgeon
  Tech news articles related to Granny Won't Knit
  Tech news articles related to works by Theodore Sturgeon

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