Editing Punched tape (section)

== History ==
[[file:Jacquard.loom.cards.jpg|thumb|upright|A paper tape, constructed from [[punched card]]s, in use in a [[Jacquard loom]]. The large holes on each edge are [[sprocket]] holes, used to pull the paper tape through the loom.]]
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 loom]]s. 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 [[Player piano|piano playing device]] that read data from [[Piano roll|perforated paper rolls]]. By 1900, wide perforated [[music roll]]s for player pianos were used to distribute popular music to mass markets.

[[File:EB1911 Telegraph - Wheatstone Punching Apparatus.jpg|thumb|left|Wheatstone slip with a dot, space and a dash punched, and perforator punch plate]]
In 1846, [[Alexander Bain (inventor)|Alexander Bain]] used punched tape to send [[telegram]]s. This technology was adopted by [[Charles Wheatstone]] in 1857 for the [[Wheatstone system]] used for the automated preparation, storage and transmission of data in telegraphy.<ref name="Maxfield_2011"/><ref name="Roberts"/>

In the 1880s, [[Tolbert Lanston]] invented the [[Monotype System|Monotype typesetting system]], which consisted of a keyboard and a composition [[Casting (metalworking)|caster]]. The tape, punched with the keyboard, was later read by the caster, which produced lead type according to the combinations of holes in up to 31 positions. The tape reader used compressed air, which passed through the holes and was directed into certain mechanisms of the caster. The system went into commercial use in 1897 and was in production well into the 1970s, undergoing several changes along the way.

=== Modern use ===
In the 21st century, punched tape is obsolete except among [[Retrocomputing|hobbyists]]. In [[Numerical control|computer numerical control]] (CNC) machining applications, though paper tape has been superseded by [[Semiconductor memory|digital memory]], some modern systems still measure the size of stored CNC programs in feet or meters, corresponding to the equivalent length if the data were actually punched on paper tape.<ref name="Smid_2010"/>