Punch tape – data you can touch and understand

Punch tape is one of the oldest forms of digital data storage. Holes in a paper strip represent bits and are therefore readable by both machines and humans. This allows stored data to be literally ‘grasped’.

The version on display here already uses 8 bits per byte, as is common on modern data storage devices today. This allows us, for example, to store and reproduce text with umlauts and emojis on punched tape.

The devices on display (puncher and reader) have been modified so that they can be operated via USB on a modern computer. A Raspberry Pi is used as the computer, with a VT510 terminal as the user interface.