The story
ANSI + art. So called because of the use of the ANSI text terminal display standard (ANSI X3.64), from the American National Standards Institute.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
ANSI art
Today it means: A form of letter art that used the extended ASCII character set from the IBM Model 5150 Personal Computer's (IBM PC) Disk Operating System (DOS), and control codes, which allowed for limited color, graphic block characters, limited sound, limited animation. Full definition →