8 Hole Paper Tape Punch

Mus.Cat. NEWUC:2003.85.1 Mnfctr: Creed & Co Ltd Date: ~1960 Ser. No: 1233 Model: S4136
Comp: Keyboard Width: 545 mm Depth: 390 mm Height: 225 mm Weight: 26 Kg

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The keyboard weighs 26Kg.

With 8 holes you can encode 256 characters,
but the eighth hole was only used twice:
once for the CODE DELETE character;
and second for the SPACE character.
So that left 7 holes for data characters, which is enough for 128 characters.
But the keyboard operated in two different cases, NORMAL and SHIFT.

The keyboard was in three sections.

In NORMAL SHIFT the black keys were operable
and could encode the letters A-Z,
numerals 0-9, and the special characters . / + -

In CASE SHIFT the yellow keys were operable
to provide the characters £ ( ) < > x ÷ * ^ [ ] : = , ne

The white keys were operable in either shift providing:
CASE NORMAL CASE SHIFT SPACE _ ; CRLF and right arrow.

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