The Teletype was the standard mechanism used to interact with a time-sharing computer

A teletype was a motorized typewriter that could transmit your keystrokes to the mainframe and then print the computer's response on its roll of paper. You typed a single line of text, hit the carriage return button, and waited for the teletype to begin noisily printing the computer's response (at a whopping 10 characters per second). On the left-hand side of the teletype in the prior picture you can observe a paper tape reader and writer (i.e., puncher). Here's a close-up of paper tape: