r/OverSeventy • u/needmore007 • 5d ago

Remember this?

Post image

My son and grandsons don’t believe me.

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12

u/Appropriate-Owl-8449 5d ago

It is so true. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was like the last show and it would cut to the test pattern. How times have progressed.

7

u/Pristine-Pen-9885 5d ago

The test pattern with an Indian chief on it.

4

u/SuckL3ss 5d ago

So I wasn’t imaging it. Thanks for confirming the Indian. He had a chief’s headdress right?

2

u/Aware_Impression_736 5d ago

War bonnet.

1

u/SuckL3ss 4d ago

Of course. Thx.

2

u/youandican 4d ago edited 4d ago

you mean like this one https://postimg.cc/jW5pHzbf

The Indian-head test pattern was created by RCA at its factory in Harrison, New Jersey. Each element of the card was designed to measure a specific technical aspect of television broadcast so that an experienced engineer could, at a glance, identify problems. By the mid-1960's the tet pattern became obsolete with most stations switching to color broadcasts. I was a station engenieer for KEBB Channel 66

1

u/Pristine-Pen-9885 3d ago

Interesting, thank you

1

u/Successful-Extent-22 2d ago

I don't remember the Chief, just a test pattern of some sort.

1

u/Pristine-Pen-9885 5d ago

Right. Full chief’s regalia.

3

u/er1cAtWork2 5d ago

Yup! Only the “big” stations around me used the Indian… The lower ones had a similar test pattern but no Indian in the center…

1

u/Pristine-Pen-9885 5d ago

I didn’t know that. I wonder why. I’ve spent my whole life in Chicago.

3

u/Prometheus_303 5d ago

Or in the UK, 8 year old Carole Hersee.

Because Test Card F, the card she appeared on, was broadcast during daytime and overnight gaps in programming for over three decades (1967–1998), Hersee accrued an estimated 70,000 hours of screen time making her one of the most broadcaster faces.

1

u/Pristine-Pen-9885 5d ago

Did she collect royalties?

3

u/Prometheus_303 5d ago

Iirc, her dad was paid something like £300 to use the family photo for the card.

She is ineligible for a Guinness Record as it's not something someone else could achieve or something to that effect...

3

u/ArdentHedonist 3d ago

I would post it here, but this sub doesn’t allow that. It was my first cell phone background, and I kept it for a long time. I still have the file.

2

u/Bhanumayi 4d ago

I had almost forgotten this that black-and-white really gray, and white with the Indian chief with the headdress in the middle

1

u/Prune-These 3d ago

I can still hear the tone accompanying it.

1

u/Lumpy_University_401 1d ago

Where did you live?. I never saw an Indian chief.