On 14/01/2026 18:56, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
On Jan 14, 2026, at 1:17 PM, Adrian Godwin via cctalk <[email protected]>
wrote:
I bought a reel of paper tape at an office supply shop today.
It was in their 'bargains' room and is marked
NCR
SYSTEMEDIA
01-6388181
Telex 888634
PTI
Made in England
It cost me £0.50. I think they had two more reels. it's age is indicated by
having a London phone number that was made obsolete 30 years ago.
However, what surprises me is that it's 17.5 mm (0.69", 11/16") wide. This
seems too narrow for 7-hole tape and too wide for the tape used for
telegrams. Is it for 5-hole tape ?
By "telegrams" did you mean Wheatstone tape, i.e., two rows to encode Morse?
I've only seen that in ads for McElroy/Creed punched paper Morse code machines (e.g, in
the 1954 ARRL Amateur Radio Handbook).
In the UK telegrams and I assume from this listing:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192535576139
were printed on gummed tape that was stuck onto a card for delivery.....
Dave
G4UGM
1 inch is standard for 8 row tape. It's also often used with 7-row codes like
some Flexowriters use. But there are more obscure sizes specificallyl for 7
row and 6 row tape. 6 row is the standard tape for typesetting machines,
starting with Linotype machines and continuing with early phototypesetters. It
was also used (for that reason) for newspaper wire service feeds.
paul
