These actually exist (or used to) for paper tape. Until the early 80's a lot of CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machine tools (e.g., milling machines, la

These actually exist (or used to) for paper tape. Until the early 80's a lot of CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machine tools (e.g., milling machines, lathes, planers, etc.) were programmed using paper tape. Large machine tools are built with literally tons of cast iron (cast iron has excellent vibration-damping characteristics and is a fairly good bearing material) and run for decades: there are still WW2-vintage machines labelled "PROPERTY OF WAR DEPARTMENT" humming along in small machine shops. Not surprisingly, the owners of expensive capital equipment didn't want to just up and buy new ones that were programmed by floppies or over RS232, etc. So an industry sprang up to convert the paper tape readers to take electronic inputs and emulate paper tape. I remember at my first job, being approached by our PCB vendor who had a CNC drill that read paper tape. He was looking for a way to bypass the tape reader and input RS-274 drill data from a floppy drive. Would have been a fun project, but my boss passed on it. In fact, there are a couple of small companies selling thumb drives with IDE interfaces that plug into the floppy drive port so you can load code on a thumb drive, but the machine thinks it's reading a floppy.