In a broader sense, perforators are typewriters with additional "special" keys and the output of punched tape, which are used from 1928 to control lead typesetting machines.

Even in the early days of digitization from 1960, these input devices and the punched tape produced were needed as text input media.

In the usual print products such as newspapers, address books or telephone books, many special characters and abbreviations are required in addition to the alphanumeric characters. Thanks to the special keyboard and the expanded punched tape format (instead of the usual 5 tracks, 6 to 8 tracks are punched to encode the characters) up to 128 characters can be set in lead typesetting machines and other fonts (mixed with each other).

Two devices are mentioned here as examples.

The manufacturer is Siemens; these devices are also sold by Hell as text acquisition and correction devices in the Digiset system.