I rescued a couple of TTY Wheatsone punches in their lovely wooden cases, and a Boehme reader, from the old Mare Island Naval facility. The machinery has all gone to good homes where it will be displayed.

However, there were also many large reels of punched tape.  I’m currently midway thru fabricating a photoelectric reader head, and I’ll program an Ardiuno or Raspbery Pi to read them.

It’s a little tricky because the decoder must discern four states: ‘ one sprocket only’(inter character gap), ‘two sprockets only’ (inter word gap), ‘sprocket plus both holes’ (a DIT), or ‘sprocket plus one hole, then sprocket plus a second hole’ (displaced by one sprocket hole in time; a DAH).

The original System, all mechanical, was said to have been able to work at up to 500 WPM…       dang……

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing what is on these old tapes.  Its not particularly difficult to read them visually, just tedious and I’m lazy.

HIHI

Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatstone_system

Cheers

John KB6SCO
Casrson City