Indian Head test card

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The Indian Head test card
The Indian Head test card

The Indian Head test card was a black and white television test pattern which was introduced in 1939 by RCA of Harrison, New Jersey as a part of the RCA TK-1 Monoscope. 20th century television later became so important socially that this purely technical instrument (covertly identified as a branded industrial product) eventually became a historical cultural icon of the early days of television as a mass medium. Its name comes from the art of an American Indian featured on the card.

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[edit] As a television broadcasting ritual

The Indian Head test pattern became familiar to the large TV post-war Baby Boom audiences in America from 1947 onwards: the Indian Head would often follow the formal television station sign-off after the United States national anthem. This Indian Head pattern was also used in Canada, following the Canadian national anthem sign-off in the evening.

The test pattern could variously be seen after sign-off while the station was still transmitting, while transmitting prior to a 6 a.m. formal sign-on, or even during the morning hours on newer low budget[citation needed] stations which typically began their broadcast day with mid-day local programs around 10 or 11 a.m.

During the late 1950s the test pattern gradually began to be seen less frequently, after fewer sign-offs, on fewer stations, and for shorter periods in the morning as much as new and improved TV equipment required less adjusting. In later years[citation needed] the test pattern was transmitted for as little as a minute after studio sign-off whilst the transmitter engineer logged readings and then turned off the power.

Towards the end of the Indian Head TV era, there was no nightly test pattern on some stations (typically when automatic logging and remote transmitter controls allowed shutdown of power immediately after the formal sign-off). After an immediate transmitter power off, an American or Canadian audience, in lieu of the Indian head test card and its sine wave tone, heard a loud audio hiss like FM radio inter-station noise and saw the video noise colloquially called "snow," indicating the absence of a signal on the channel.

When USA broadcasters transitioned to color television, the SMPTE color bars superseded the black-and-white test pattern image. In Sweden the Indian head was used in test transmissions from the Royal Institute of Technology from 1948 until November 1958 when it was replaced by the Sveriges Television test card.

[edit] As television system tool

The primary and critical Indian Head test pattern was not itself a card. Rather, it was generated directly as a monochrome video signal by means of an opaque metal cathode ray tube known as a monoscope [1] which had a perfectly proportioned copy of the test pattern inside, permanently deposited as a carbon image on an aluminum target plate. This perfect copy allowed all of the studio or control room video picture monitors, and home television sets, to be identically adjusted for minimum distortions such as ovals instead of circles.

Only after the monitors were adjusted was an actual Indian Head Test Card used. A cardboard mounted lithograph of the test pattern was typically attached to a rolling vertical easel in each TV studio, to be videographed by each studio camera during test time. Then the cameras were adjusted to appear identical on picture monitors alternately switching between the monoscope image and the test card image. Such adjustments were made on a regular basis because television system electronics then used hot vacuum tubes, the operating characteristics of which drifted throughout each broadcast day.

Test patterns were also broadcast to the public daily to allow regular adjustments by home television set owners and TV shop repair technicians. In this regard, various features in the pattern were included to facilitate focus and contrast settings, and the measurement of resolution. The circular "bulls-eyes" in the centre and the four corners permitted uniform deflection yoke and oscillator amplitude adjustments for centering, pincushioning and image size. The test pattern was usually accompanied by a 1,000 or 400 hertz sine wave test tone. 400 Hz is somewhat less annoying for technicians to hear for extended work periods.

[edit] As cultural icon

An actual Indian Head Test Card was only of secondary importance to television system adjustment, but many of them were saved as souvenirs, works of found art, and inadvertent mandalas. By contrast, nearly all of the hard-to-open steel monoscope tubes were junked with their hidden Indian Head test pattern target plates still inside.

The original art work was completed for RCA by an artist named Brooks on August 23, 1938. The master art was improbably discovered in a dumpster by a wrecking crew worker as the old RCA factory in Harrison, NJ was being demolished in 1970. The worker kept the art for over 30 years, and then used the Internet to locate and sell it to a test pattern collector.[2]

As of 2008, most television stations in the United States no longer sign off overnight, instead running infomercials, networked overnight news shows, re-runs or old movies, but the Indian Head Test Card persists as a symbol of early television. It was even sold (by the Archie McPhee company, from 1997 to 2005) as a night-light, reminiscent of the times when a fairly common late-night experience was to fall asleep while watching the late movie, only to awaken to the characteristic sine wave tone of the the Indian head test card on the screen.

[edit] Television appearances

[edit] Film appearances

  • The test pattern flashes onscreen briefly as part of a burst of TV interference at the very beginning of John Carpenter's directorial debut, the 1974 sci-fi comedy Dark Star.
  • The test pattern features prominently on the original U.S. poster and DVD packaging art of 1989 cult comedy UHF as the lenses of "Weird Al" Yankovic's glasses.
  • In the 1996 film Beavis and Butthead Do America the test card briefly appears on a motel TV in Muddy's room.
  • In the 1998 film Pleasantville a modified version of the test card appears on the television screen behind the Don Knotts character. The Indian head changes its facial expression over the course of the film.
  • In the 2002 film Signs, the test card anachronistically appears on a set during the invasion.
  • In the 2005 film The Amityville Horror, the test card briefly (and anachronistically) appears on the television in the basement during the opening sequence.
  • In the 2007 film Zodiac the test card is (accurately) shown on a monitor in the television station's control room.
  • In the 2008 animated film Justice League: The New Frontier the Martian Manhunter learns about American pop culture by watching television; he morphs into several characters, ending with the Indian as the station announces that it's going off air. This is in keeping with the era in which most of the film is set: the 1950s. The card itself appears later in the story as a Please Stand By notice after The Flash briefly commandeers a television station.

[edit] Other appearances

  • On Cheech and Chong's Big Bambu album, at the beginning of a long sketch spoofing TV shows, Cheech drops by Chong's pad and asks what he's watching. Chong replies, "I don't know, it's a movie about Indians, but it's really boring." Cheech says, "Hey man, that's not a movie, man. That's a test pattern, man!" Chong answers, "Far out." A 1 kilohertz test tone is audible in the background.
  • A parody of this test card appears in the computer game Streets of SimCity for 5 seconds before going to the main menu.
  • The test card makes appearance as a loading screen in the game Fallout.
  • A tiny reproduction of the Indian test card is also found on the main control panel of the AVD Video Processor program.
  • The Newtek Video Toaster video switcher product used a slightly stylized and colorized version of the Indian head test card in the product logo, promotional literature, and as a usable video 'effect' (provided as a still frame picture) that could be inserted into produced video. This may account for some appearances on US, UK, Canadian, German, and many other countries' TV programs during the 1990s, as the Video Toaster product was popular with TV stations and video production studios alike due to its low cost.
  • The test card is featured prominently in the cover art of the Michael Penn album Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links