{"id":5662,"date":"2016-05-23T18:29:12","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T18:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/paper-tape\/"},"modified":"2016-05-23T18:29:12","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T18:29:12","slug":"paper-tape","status":"publish","type":"definition","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape","title":{"rendered":"Paper Tape"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span id=\"what_does_paper_tape_mean\">What Does Paper Tape Mean?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Paper tape is a slow, low-capacity, sequential medium for<br \/>\ndata storage that was used on early communications and computing devices. The<br \/>\npaper tape holds data as patterns of punched holes with data being represented by the absence or presence of holes at specific positions. The data<br \/>\nwas written and stored using special tape reading and writing systems. It was<br \/>\nwidely used during the early twentieth century for teleprinter communication as<br \/>\nwell as in the computing world in the 1950s and 1960s. Paper tape is largely obsolete now.\n<\/p>\n<p>Paper tape is also known as perforated paper tape.\n<\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"techopedia_explains_paper_tape\">Techopedia Explains Paper Tape<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Paper tape was a long strip of paper in which holes were punched, in order to store data. Paper tape was usually 0.1 mm thick and the hole spacing was 2.54 mm in both directions of the tape. Some paper tapes had predefined mechanical, electrical and optical properties, so that they could be used in all environments. The movement of the tape with respect to the data was usually marked on the paper tape. Data on the paper tape can be encoded by several techniques. Many standards were used for encoding, such as: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Baudot code<\/li>\n<li>Murray code<\/li>\n<li>Western Union Code <\/li>\n<li>International telegraphic code <\/li>\n<li>American teletypewriter code<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There were some early benefits associated with paper tape. Compared to magnetic tapes, punched tapes had better longevity if acid-free paper or similar paper was used. In the case of tear or damage, it could be fixed to a certain extent and therefore had better human accessibility. Paper tape was immune to magnetic fields and so the data could be read and stored for longer periods. <\/p>\n<p>There were several drawbacks with paper tape. It was less reliable and practice existed to follow each paper tape with manual hole-by-hole comparison. Great care was required to prevent the paper tape from tearing. Rewinding was very difficult. The information density associated with paper tape was very low. In fact, data larger than a few kilobytes was tough to handle in the paper tape format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Does Paper Tape Mean? Paper tape is a slow, low-capacity, sequential medium for data storage that was used on early communications and computing devices. The paper tape holds data as patterns of punched holes with data being represented by the absence or presence of holes at specific positions. The data was written and stored [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7813,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"definitioncat":[223],"class_list":["post-5662","definition","type-definition","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","definitioncat-storage"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.2 (Yoast SEO v24.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is Paper Tape? - Definition from Techopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Paper Tape and why it matters.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paper Tape\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Paper Tape and why it matters.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Techopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/techopedia\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@techopedia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Margaret Rouse\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f5dd538e31ee352d105b8af36c4268a5\"},\"headline\":\"Paper Tape\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-05-23T18:29:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape\"},\"wordCount\":342,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape#respond\"]}],\"articleSection\":\"\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape\",\"name\":\"What is Paper Tape? - Definition from Techopedia\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-05-23T18:29:12+00:00\",\"description\":\"This definition explains the meaning of Paper Tape and why it matters.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Storage\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/storage\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"Term\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":4,\"name\":\"Paper Tape\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/\",\"name\":\"Techopedia\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Techopedia\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/techopedia-light-logo.svg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/techopedia-light-logo.svg\",\"caption\":\"Techopedia\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/techopedia\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/techopedia\",\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/techopedia\/\",\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/Techopedia\"],\"publishingPrinciples\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/about\/editorial-policy\",\"ownershipFundingInfo\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/about\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f5dd538e31ee352d105b8af36c4268a5\",\"name\":\"Margaret Rouse\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/margaret-rouse-headshot.jpeg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/margaret-rouse-headshot.jpeg\",\"caption\":\"Margaret Rouse\"},\"description\":\"Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other\u2019s highly specialized languages.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/margaretrouse\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/@techdefinitions\"],\"knowsAbout\":[\"Technology Expert\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/contributors\/margaret-rouse\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What is Paper Tape? - Definition from Techopedia","description":"This definition explains the meaning of Paper Tape and why it matters.","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Paper Tape","og_description":"This definition explains the meaning of Paper Tape and why it matters.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape","og_site_name":"Techopedia","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/techopedia\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_site":"@techopedia","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape"},"author":{"name":"Margaret Rouse","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f5dd538e31ee352d105b8af36c4268a5"},"headline":"Paper Tape","datePublished":"2016-05-23T18:29:12+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape"},"wordCount":342,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape#respond"]}],"articleSection":""},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape","url":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape","name":"What is Paper Tape? - Definition from Techopedia","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-05-23T18:29:12+00:00","description":"This definition explains the meaning of Paper Tape and why it matters.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/9029\/paper-tape#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Storage","item":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/storage"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Term","item":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"Paper Tape"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/","name":"Techopedia","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization","name":"Techopedia","url":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/techopedia-light-logo.svg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/techopedia-light-logo.svg","caption":"Techopedia"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/techopedia\/","https:\/\/x.com\/techopedia","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/techopedia\/","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/Techopedia"],"publishingPrinciples":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/about\/editorial-policy","ownershipFundingInfo":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/about"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f5dd538e31ee352d105b8af36c4268a5","name":"Margaret Rouse","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/margaret-rouse-headshot.jpeg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/margaret-rouse-headshot.jpeg","caption":"Margaret Rouse"},"description":"Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other\u2019s highly specialized languages.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/margaretrouse\/","https:\/\/x.com\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/@techdefinitions"],"knowsAbout":["Technology Expert"],"url":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/contributors\/margaret-rouse"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/definition\/5662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/definition"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/definition"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7813"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/definition\/5662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"definitioncat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/definitioncat?post=5662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}