> 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).
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
