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Could have been something that came from DEC as the original NT was influenced by VAX systems (which often had LA120's as consoles) I seem to recall.

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Certainly not from DEC. DEC had a powerful "RMS" (record management system) later between a program and the disk. That later would take files in a balloon formats and convert them as needed.

For example, you could define that your file was fixed length records (like the old punch cards); at that point each line doesn't have a line separator at all; the \n or\r is not stored on disk. But when you read a line using the C routines, one will be added.

We are talking about the usage or CR/LF for terminal devices the LA120 and so on not some internal binary file standard.

I am not sure what C or RMS has to do with this

Because we're talking about how end-of-line is marked in a file, not in a terminal. DOS specifies the end-of-line in a file as CR/LF.

Not likely, as NT got this behaviour from DOS, And DOS probably got this from CP/M.

And CP/M was influenced by RT-11, another DEC operating system, bringing us full circle.

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