Item045: Paper Tape Punch Earrings - Blue, Silver, and ASCII

About the Jewelry

These earrings were made for people who were programming computers before the 1980s, or those that just enjoy retro tech. These are from the days of punched cards, watermelon paper, and typewriters. These earrings were made from computer paper tape. Paper tape was a significant improvement over punch cards for programmers. No longer did you have the fear of your cards getting out of order, but you did have to create a new paper tape every time you made a change. Paper tapes punched a code for each letter or number. The code was represented by round holes punched in rows on the tape. A hole was a 1, and the lack of a hole was a 0. The code was known as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).

Included:

The earrings, 1" and 3/4" two-sided disks with light blue paper tape with mirrored holes, (due to manufacturing differences your earrings may look slightly different than the one pictured here), and a ChipScapes card that gives information about this jewelry.