Punched Tapes

Cad/Cam

Maaz Ahmed 8978

 Punched Tapes
Introduction
Punched tape or paper tape is a largely obsolete form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper
in which holes are punched to store data. It was widely used during much of the twentieth century for
teleprinter communication, and later as a storage medium for minicomputers and CNC machine tools.

Origin
The earliest forms of punched tape come from [weaving] looms and embroidery, where cards with
simple instructions about a machine's intended movements were first fed individually as instructions,
then controlled by instruction cards, and later was fed as a string of connected cards. (See Jacquard
loom).

In 1846 Alexander Bain used punched tape to send telegrams.

Tape formats
This led to the concept of communicating data not as a stream of individual cards, but one "continuous
card", or a tape. 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, after many years of use, in the 1990s.

Data was represented by the presence or absence of a hole in a particular location. Tapes originally had
five rows of holes for data. Later tapes had 6, 7 and 8 rows. A row of narrower sprocket holes that were
always punched served to feed the tape, typically with a wheel with radial teeth called a sprocket wheel.
Text was encoded in several ways. The earliest standard character encoding was Baudot, which dates
back to the nineteenth century and had 5 holes. Later standards, such as Teletypesetter (TTS), Fieldata
and Flexowriter, had 6 holes. In the early 1960s, the American Standards Association led a project to
develop a universal code for data processing, which became known as ASCII. This 7-level code was
adopted by some teleprinter users, including AT&T (Teletype). Others, such as Telex, stayed with
Baudot.

Chadless Tape
Most tape-punching equipment used solid punches to create holes in the tape. This process inevitably
creates "chads", or small circular pieces of paper. Managing the disposal of chads was an annoying and
complex problem, as the tiny paper pieces had a distressing tendency to escape and interfere with the
other electromechanical parts of the teleprinter equipment.
 One variation on the tape punch was a device called a Chadless Printing Reperforator. This machine
would punch a received teleprinter signal into tape and print the message on it at the same time, using a
printing mechanism similar to that of an ordinary page printer. The tape punch, rather than punching
out the usual round holes, would instead punch little U-shaped cuts in the paper, so that no chads would
be produced; the "hole" was still filled with a little paper trap-door. By not fully punching out the hole,
the printing on the paper remained intact and legible. This enabled operators to read the tape without
having to decipher the holes, which would facilitate relaying the message on to another station in the
network. Also, of course, there was no "chad box" to empty from time to time. A disadvantage to this
mechanism was that chadless tape, once punched, did not roll up well, because the protruding flaps of
paper would catch on the next layer of tape, so it could not be rolled up tightly. Another disadvantage,
as seen over time, was that there was no reliable way to read chadless tape by optical means employed
by later high-speed readers. However, the mechanical tape readers used in most standard-speed
equipment had no problem with chadless tape, because it sensed the holes by means of blunt spring-
loaded sensing pins, which easily pushed the paper flaps out of the way.

Applications
Communications
Punched tape was used as a way of storing messages for teletypewriters. Operators typed in the
message to the paper tape, and then sent the message at the maximum line speed from the tape.

This permitted the operator to prepare the message "off-line" at the operator's best typing speed, and
permitted the operator to correct any error prior to transmission. An experienced operator could
prepare a message at 135WPM (Words Per Minute) or more for short periods.

The line typically operated at 75WPM, but it operated continuously. By preparing the tape "off-line" and
then sending the message with a tape reader, the line could operate continuously rather than
depending on continuous "on-line" typing by a single operator. Typically, a single 75WPM line supported
three or more teletype operators working offline.

Tapes punched at the receiving end could be used to relay messages to another station. Large store and
forward networks were developed using these techniques.

Minicomputers
When the first minicomputers were being released, most manufacturers turned to the existing mass-
produced ASCII teleprinters (primarily the ASR33 capable of 10 ASCII characters per second throughput)
as a low-cost solution for keyboard input and printer output. The commonly specified Model 33 ASR
included a paper tape punch/reader, where ASR stands for "Automatic Send/Receive" as opposed to the
punchless/readerless KSR - Keyboard Send/Receive and ROP - Receive Only Printer models. As a side
effect, punched tape became a popular medium for low cost minicomputer data and program storage,
and it was common to find a selection of tapes containing useful programs in most minicomputer
installations. Faster optical readers were also common.
Binary data transfer to or from these minicomputers was often accomplished using a doubly-encoded
technique to compensate for the relatively high error rate of punches / readers. The low-level encoding
was typically ASCII, further encoded and framed in various schemes such as Intel Hex - in which a binary
value of "01011010" would be represented by the ASCII characters "5A". Framing, addressing and
checksum (primarily in ASCII hex characters) information provided error detection capabilities.
Efficiencies of such an encoding scheme are on the order of 35-40% (e.g., 36% from 44 8-bit ASCII
characters being needed to represent 16 bytes of binary data per frame).

Data Transfer for ROM and EPROM Programming

In the 1970s through the early 1980s, paper tape was commonly used to transfer binary data for
incorporation in either mask-programmable read-only memory (ROM) chips or their erasable
counterparts - EPROMs.

A significant variety of encoding formats were developed for use in computer and ROM/EPROM data
transfer. Encoding formats commonly used were primarily driven by those formats that EPROM
programming devices supported and included various ASCII hex variants as well as a number of
computer-proprietary formats.

A much more primitive as well as a much longer high-level encoding scheme was also used - BNPF
(Begin-Negative-Positive-Finish). In BNPF encoding, a single byte (8 bits) would be represented by a
highly redundant character framing sequence starting with a single ASCII "B", eight ASCII characters
where a "0" would be represented by a "N" and a "1" would be represented by a "P", followed by a
ending ASCII "F". These ten-character ASCII sequences were separated by one or more whitespace
characters, therefore using at least 11 ASCII characters for each byte stored (9% efficiency). The ASCII
"N" and "P" characters differ in four bit positions, providing excellent protection from single punch
errors. Alternative schemes were also available where "H" and "L" or "0" and "1" were also available to
represent data bits, but in both of these encoding schemes, the two data-bearing ASCII characters differ
in only one bit position, providing very poor single punch error detection.

Cash registers
National Cash Register or NCR (Dayton Ohio) made cash registers around 1970 that would punch paper
tape. The tape could then be read into a computer and not only could sales information be summarized,
billings could be done on charge transactions.

Newspaper Industry
Punched paper tape was used by the newspaper industry until the mid-1970's or later. Newspapers
were typically set in hot lead by devices such as a linotype. With the wire services coming into a device
that would punch paper tape, rather than the linotype operator having to retype all the incoming wire
stories, the paper tape could be put into a paper tape reader on the linotype and it would create the
lead slugs without the operator re-typing the stories. This also allowed newspapers to use devices such
as the Friden Flexowriter, to convert typing to lead type via tape. Even after the demise of the
Linotype/hot lead, many early "offset" devices had paper tape readers on them to produce the news-
story copy.
Automated machinery
In the 1970s, computer-aided manufacturing equipment often used paper tape. Paper tape was a very
important storage medium for computer-controlled wire-wrap machines, for example. A paper tape
reader was smaller and much less expensive than hollerith card or magnetic tape readers. Premium
black waxed and lubricated long-fiber papers and Mylar film tape were invented so that production
tapes for these machines would last longer.

Limitations
The three biggest problems with paper tape were:

o Reliability. It was common practice to follow each mechanical copying of a tape with a manual
hole by hole comparison.
o Rewinding the tape was difficult and prone to problems. Great care was needed to avoid tearing
the tape. Some systems used fanfold paper tape rather than rolled paper tape. In these systems,
no rewinding was necessary nor were any fancy supply reel, take-up reel, or tension arm
mechanisms required; the tape merely fed from the supply tank through the reader to the take-
up tank, refolding itself back into the exact same form as when it was fed into the reader.
o Low information density. Datasets much larger than a few dozen kilobytes are impractical to
handle in paper tape format.

Advantages
Punched tape does have some useful properties:

 Longevity. Although many magnetic tapes have deteriorated over time to the point that the data
on them has been irretrievably lost, punched tape can be read many decades later, if acid-free
paper or Mylar film is used. Some paper can degrade rapidly.
 Human accessibility. The hole patterns can be decoded visually if necessary, and torn tape can
be repaired (using special all-hole pattern tape splices). Editing text on a punched tape was
achieved by literally cutting and pasting the tape with scissors, glue, or by taping over a section
to cover all holes and making new holes using a manual hole punch.
 Magnetic field immunity. In a machine shop full of powerful electric motors, the numerical
control programs need to survive the magnetic fields generated by those motors.