IBM Printer Carriage Control Tape Puncher - Streamline
Marked international business machines corp., it's an early IBM PRINTER CARRIAGE CONTROL TAPE key/hole puncher from 1975. This is a punch for the carriage control top of an IBM Printer. The holes in the IZ channels of the tape controlled high-speed vertical movement of the fan-fold paper in the printer. There were special paper tapes, a little more than 12 inches long and had printed lines for indicating 'channels'. Into these tape holes were punched with this machine corresponding to height measures in preprinted forms. The tape was cut to length and glued as a ring, then inserted in a special part of the high speed printer. This paper ring was moved forward in unison with the forms and sensed channels by wire brushes. Whenever in the program an instruction 'skip to channel n' was encountered this resulted in the progression of the paper in one quick jump. This was all found in the famous printer IBM 1403 that belonged to the IBM 1401 system and was carried through many models through IBM /360 and /370. Later this paper ring went 'virtual' and a special data structure was invented that did the very same thing.