For those that never have used paper tape, it had one big advantage. You could edit it. Using tape and a pair of scissors.
Storing more than 1K or 2K in a roll becomes unwieldy to store and carry around. And do not drop it so it comes unrolled !!
At one time in my life I spent many hours every week decoding MS1553 traffic. basically, 4 digit hex numbers.
after about 6 months i was able to subtract in hex. and add. in my head. without writing anything down.
some parameters where in 'BAMS' (look it up, it is cool). could look at 2 4 digit hex numbers and understand the magnitude of the angle differences without thinking about it.
today, i need a calculator for anything...
punch your 'patch'. make sure there are a couple of feet of nothing before and after (no data, just paper with the sprocket holes in it).
cut into the 'master' tape at the right point.
tape in your patch.
duplicate the 'master' to make a new master. the ASR-33 had a mode where it would duplicate a tape.
unless they were sequence numbered and you had a sorting machine[0] :-)
put them in a file.
sort the file.
send the file to a cardpunch.
recycle the original card deck
i don't remember how to do this on a CDC mainframe, but at one time in my life it would only have taken 15 minutes. of which 14 minutes would be waiting for my job to run.
My version didn't use a motor and required a human to pull the tape through, had a set of guide holes down the middle to indicate when a bit was to be read and used LEDs as both the light sources and the photo receptors.
All in all a rather fun project which worked much better than it had any right to.
Never did find a material which had the longevity of aluminium foil with the durability of 35mm film stock.
https://theforestrystore.com/collections/aluminum-tags/produ... ?
(Also note that OP’s version doesn’t require a motor either and can be actuated by hand, per TFA.)
[0] https://heepy.net/index.php/Data_storage_capacity_of_teletyp...
[0] https://ollydbg.de/Paperbak (posted various times to HN)