Telegraph Tape Reels. These metal stands with spooled paper tape captured Morse-coded communication in dots and dashes. The tape unwound like film through a camera—except instead of images, it recorded the rhythm of human speech transformed into pulses.
Some early models used weights or spring mechanisms, much like wind-up clocks. As the spring unwound, the tape advanced smoothly beneath a stylus that pressed the characters into it. It was like a sewing machine embroidering a message into an endless ribbon of paper.