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Concept
Punched tape
Summary
Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage device that consists of a long strip of paper through which small holes are punched. It was developed from and was subsequently used alongside punched cards, the difference being that the tape is continuous.
Punched cards, and chains of punched cards, were used for control of looms in the 18th century. Use for telegraphy systems started in 1842. Punched tapes were used throughout the 19th and for much of the 20th centuries for programmable looms, teleprinter communication, for input to computers of the 1950s and 1960s, and later as a storage medium for minicomputers and CNC machine tools. During the Second World War, high-speed punched tape systems using optical readout methods were used in code breaking systems. Punched tape was used to transmit data for manufacture of read-only memory chips.
Perforated paper tapes were first used by Basile Bouchon in 1725 to control looms. However, the paper tapes were expensive to create, fragile, and difficult to repair. By 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard had developed machines to create paper tapes by tying punched cards in a sequence for Jacquard looms. The resulting paper tape, also called a "chain of cards", was stronger and simpler both to create and to repair. This led to the concept of communicating data not as a stream of individual cards, but as one "continuous card" (or tape). Paper tapes constructed from punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling looms. Many professional embroidery operations still refer to those individuals who create the designs and machine patterns as punchers even though punched cards and paper tape were eventually phased out in the 1990s.
In 1842, a French patent by Claude Seytre described a piano playing device that read data from perforated paper rolls. By 1900, wide perforated music rolls for player pianos were used to distribute popular music to mass markets.
In 1846, Alexander Bain used punched tape to send telegrams.
Official source
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