Restoring Old Paper Tape

By all means, let's discuss and it will be a useful and fascinating conversation both now and in the future. But just as a thought for the more immediate issue (your tapes)... I find it somewhat unlikely that a significant number of early HP 21XX paper tapes are not already archived, or in good condition elsewhere. So at least regarding your particular stash of tapes, I'd suggest first getting a list up of what all you have. At the least, you may find machine readable images already exist, or that of all your tapes there's only 3 that should be given heroic efforts.... There's a major percentage of those tapes online, and I have a pretty huge (cases and cases) stash of early 2114/5/6 & 2100 tapes I haven't even cataloged yet. I should do the same, but at least mine are all (currently) in pristine shape :) J