I'm fascinated by the old television test patterns, so it's no wonder that my Facebook profile picture is the image of the famous Indian head test pattern. A couple of my Facebook friends got all nostalgic when they saw it, so I thought that they would enjoy reading a little bit about the history of the television test pattern. What follows is the speech that I delivered on that very topic, at a recent meeting of my Toastmasters club. Read and enjoy! Wistfulness is not only permitted, but encouraged.
Remember the old TV test patterns? Many of us who
experienced firsthand the heyday of television remember them. They were geometric charts, often with a
bull’s eye design, that were transmitted onto television screens from the 1940s
through the 1970s. Test patterns came on
at night after formal sign offs by the television stations and the playing of
the National Anthem. In those days falling
asleep while watching the late movie was common and even pleasant. Less
pleasant was awakening after the movie to the weird test pattern and the eerie sine
wave tone that usually accompanied it. The
sine tone was very similar to the sound of the emergency broadcast system that
is periodically transmitted on our local radio stations. Not the sort of thing that,
in any era, you want to hear in a dark living room in the middle of the
night.
Test patterns have become a nostalgia icon, reminiscent of
the days when television programming was wholesome, and TV-watching was so all-American
a pastime that gathering the family around the television to watch Roy Rogers
and to eat dinner from TV trays was practically patriotic.
But those odd bull’s eye patterns served a purpose other
than to weird out viewers, or to instill baby boomers with wistfulness.
In the twenties test patterns,
which at the time were called test charts, did not conform to any
standard. But by the 1930s,
broadcasters settled on a design that would accomplish two things: check the quality of the transmission from
television studio to antenna, and allow viewers to adjust the pictures received
by their televisions at home.
The archetypical
chart used by NBC/RCA, the first television “network,” looked like this:
If the transmitter was scanning beams that were too narrow
or too wide, the circles took on an elliptical shape. If the scanning of the
beams was not uniform, the circles would be egg-shaped. These shaded concentric circles in the center
were used to measure and set the contrast controls, which adjusted the amount
of shading and depth.
The bars that shot out from the bullseye in four directions were called
“definition wedges.” The horizontal lines were used to measure vertical
resolution, and the vertical lines measured the horizontal resolution.
When a television set was initially set up in a person’s
home, these defects were corrected by the installer using precision
controls. But over time dials would
shift, so the test chart would help the viewer to make adjustments of his own
as needed.
Let me pause here and ask how many of you are laptop owners? Now how many of you have read the manual that
came with your laptop? Now you probably
understand why folks with televisions in their homes didn’t know how to use the
test patterns. Although televisions came
with manuals that explained how to adjust the TV controls using the test
pattern, most users didn’t bother to read them.
It’s interesting to note that this was the case even in the early days
of television, when the test chart appeared on screen more frequently than the
live programming. By the 1950s the test pattern was shown in the early morning
or very late at night and most users randomly fiddled with the knobs and
antenna hoping to somehow end up with a quality picture.
Those viewers who were paying attention to test patterns saw
a lot of the famous Indian Head design.
The Indian Head was created for RCA in 1939. No one knows how or why the design was
chosen, but the Indian head is a cultural icon. When television stations
switched from analog to digital transmission in 2009, many of them chose the
Indian head as their final broadcast.
The image has even been produced as a night light. An interesting footnote is that the original
Indian head artwork was found in 1970 by a wrecking crew worker in a dumpster at
a demolished RCA factory. He saved the piece for over 30 years before selling
it to a test pattern collector. During the 1950s and 60s the Indian Head
pattern was gradually phased out. At first it was shown for shorter periods of
time, then was eventually replaced by the chart of color bars that heralded the
era of color TV.
An interesting side note is that, at about the time the
Indian Head test pattern made its onscreen debut, RCA was experimenting with
transmission of a dimensional image. The
earliest dimensional image to appear on the screen in the mid-thirties on NBC’s
experimental station W2XBS was a rubberized model of Felix the Cat
(the only object that would not melt under intensely hot studio lights).
In Third World countries, test cards are still
seen because most television stations in those countries do not have 24-hour
programming. But here in America in the
1970s, twenty-four hour broadcasting made test patterns obsolete.
The appeal of television test patterns, however, lives
on. TV test pattern buffs can get all
manner of goods imprinted with test patterns, including clothing, jewelry,
doormats, laptop skins, shower curtains, and – not surprisingly – TV trays. If you are a do-it-yourselfer repairing a television you may need a
test pattern generator to help you to locate a
malfunction. Never fear! You can download the
free test pattern software from the internet.
Luau Beans is
a good lazy-day dish. Don Hawaiian duds,
spin some Don Ho, and "hula" away the afternoon.
There’s no harm done if the beans end up
baking overtime. Hakuna Matata.
