 When active, the two tape reels thus fed tape into or pulled tape out of the vacuum columns, intermittently spinning in rapid, unsynchronized bursts resulting in visually striking action.Stock shots of such vacuum-column tape drives in motion were widely used to represent "the computer" in movies and television.Early half-inch tape had seven parallel tracks of data along the length of the tape, allowing six-bit characters plus one bit of parity written across the tape.