WDS TEST PATTERN WATCH

INDIAN HEAD TEST PATTERN:

An actual Indian-head test card, the pattern as printed on art-grade white

cardboard, was only of secondary importance to television system adjustment, but many of them were saved as souvenirs, works of found object art, and inadvertent mandalas. By contrast, nearly all of the hard-to-open, steel-shielded, vacuum glass monoscope tubes were junked with their hidden Indian-head test pattern target plates still inside. The monoscope target plates were also small, a few inches in size, while the camera test cards were 1.5 by 2 feet 0.46 by 0.61m, appropriate for picture-framed wall display.

The original art work for the Indian chief portrait was completed for RCAs research engineers by an artist named Brooks on August 23, 1938. The original portrait was done in pencil, charcoal, ink andzinc oxide. For about a year said portrait was televised in the laboratory as the entire test pattern. Only from 1939 onwards was said portrait incorporated into the current pattern of calibrated lines and shapes. The original portrait measures eight inches 20 cm as a circular image containing several identifiable shades of gray, and some detail in the feathers. There is also some Zone 8 texture in the white feathering and some Zone 2 texture in the black hair. The master art for both the portrait and the pattern design was discovered in a dumpster by a wrecking crew worker as the old RCA factory in Harrison, New Jersey was being demolished in 1970. The worker kept the art for over 30 years before selling it to television engineer and collector Chuck Pharis.

The Indian-head test pattern became obsolete in the 1960s with the debut of color television; from that point onward, an alternate test card of SMPTE color bars and its immediate predecessors, or colorized versions of the NBC/CBS-derived "bullseye" patterns became the test card of choice. Since the 1990s, most television stations in theUnited Stateshave broadcast continuously without regular sign-offs, instead running infomercials, networked overnight news shows, syndicated reruns, cartoons, or old movies; thus, the broadcast of test patterns has become mostly obsolete though they are still used in post-production and broadcast facilities to check color and signal paths. Nevertheless, the Indian-head test pattern persists as a symbol of early television.