Going back to the telex machines, I was in the WRAC in the early 1960's working as a SigCen Operator. We would type out a message on the teleprinter which would come out of another machine that was attached to the printer called a reperforator, as a long tape with holes in it with the message in words along the bottom - you could see if there were any mistakes before sending it on to the addressee.
Messages would then be sent round the world to other army signal centres using a reperforator, when a message came in, again it would be on tape. You then threaded this tape through the reperf and it translated the holes in the tape to words on onto paper which could be passed to however it was addressed to.
We used to look forward to Christmas when messages came from places like Singapore and Hong Kong which when printed out the paper could be as much as two or three feet long.
All you could see as it was printing would be a series of X's with occasional other letters but when the message finished the paper would be held up lengthways to see Santa and his reindeer and under neath would be the message "Greetings from ......(name of the sigcen who sent it)
Jean
