Talk:Punched tape

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Below the line is ErikFP's original text. I did my best to salvage any useful information from it and make the article again conform to Wikipedia standards, but it is quite likely I blundered since I don't really know anything about it. Gadykozma 06:39, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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The first use of paper tape predates computers, it was Thomas Edision and his Stock Ticker machines also his Repeating Telegraph. These were the forerunners of what became the computer punched paper tape.

There were two standards for computer tape. The Baudot which had 5 holes and the ASCII which had 8 holes. The image above shows an 8 hole tape. Teletypes were first used in conjunction with TWX Telex (also Telegrams), they were also adopted by Ham radio RTTY operators before finding their way into service as computer terminals.

Back in the late 1960s to early 1970s, the ASR33 was a very popular teletype. It had a built in paper tape reader and tape punch (8 hole ASCII). It could read/punch tape at the blinding speed of 10 characters per second. :-) The ASR33 tape reader was purely mechanical; 8 spring loaded fingers would be thrust into the tape (one character at a time), an amazing assortment of rods and levers would sense how high the finger rose, which told it if there was a hole in the tape at that position.

The ASR33 teletype that I worked with was hooked up to an HP minicomputer. Eventually the school also purchased a High Speed Photo Tape Reader, which consisted of 8 light sensors and could read a tape at the blinding speed of 50 inches per second (a similar photo reader also came with the DEC PDP 15).

The two biggest problems with paper tape is that (1) The ASR33 punch was not very reliable. After making a copy of a tape you would then have to compare hole by hole with the original tape (8k bytes checked by hand!). (2) The other big problem is rewinding the tape. You have this streamer that is perhaps 50 feet long and pretty fragile. You have to roll it back up before you can use it again, or store it. We had a modified electric eraser to assist with this. But great care was needed to avoid tearing the tape.

Repairing a mispunched or torn tape was a process of gluing a strip of punched tape over the damaged area.

ErikFP 12:27, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

Oppose- Paper tape and punch card are completely different media: different shape, thickness, hole size character encoding, readers and writers, history, time frame, etc. The only thing they have in common is paper (and some paper tape was made of mylar). --agr 16:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Oppose and comment- While they share some heritage back with weaving looms, cards went for a lot of information on single discrete units, tape went for information spread across one long unit. Ronabop 04:27, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Oppose -- substantially different histories even though they resemble each other technologically. Atlant 12:37, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Oppose- linking to Punch card in See also seems to be much more useful than merging disparate articles. Slark 07:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Oppose- They're different media, with different histories and different usages. User:Ray Van De Walker