Punched tape
（重定向自Chadless tape）
![Five-hole and eight-hole punched paper tape](/Images/godic/202501/03/PaperTapes-5and8Hole1915.jpg")
![Paper tape reader on an early computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle - creating a physical program loop](/Images/godic/202501/03/Harwell-dekatron-witch-101916.jpg")
![A paper tape, constructed from punched cards, in use in a Jacquard loom. The large holes on each edge are sprocket holes, used to pull the paper tape through the loom.](/Images/godic/202501/03/Jacquard.loom.cards1916.jpg")
![A 24-channel program tape for the Harvard Mark I](/Images/godic/202501/03/Harvard_Mark_I_program_tape.agr1916.jpg")
Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data. Now effectively obsolete, it was widely used during much of the twentieth century for teleprinter communication, for input to computers of the 1950s and 1960s, and later as a storage medium for minicomputers and CNC machine tools.