TEST PATTERNS

All of us who are Baby Boomers will remember the test patterns on our old black and white T.V.s. There was always a shrill whine sound accompanying them. In those days there was no such thing as 24 hour T.V. and all the channels would “sign off” around midnight or 1 AM or sometime around then. There would be a quick devotional by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, then the National Anthem would play and then after a few minutes of “fade to black” the test pattern would then come on all night. I could never figure out why there had to be a test pattern on. Maybe the T.V. stations didn’t want to turn off their transmitters. In fact, having a background in electronics as a hobby, that’s probably the reason for the test pattern. As kids we would many times get up “at the crack of dawn” to watch Saturday morning cartoons (back when they were really good and worth watching). Sometimes if we got up too early we would be really disappointed if the test pattern was still on! Many times Tim and I would hear the test pattern if Uncle Ned fell asleep in front of the T.V. downstairs. One of us would then go down to the living room and turn off the T.V. in front of the snoring Uncle Ned. Another neat thing they had of the T.V. was when they had technical difficulties they would have a drawing of a guy looking behind his T.V. and the message was, “We are experiencing technical difficulties”. Heh heh, does anyone remember that besides Tim and me???? Alas, test patterns have gone the way of milk bottles and hundreds of other neat things we had when we were kids. Of course, that anyone would miss watching test patterns is a mystery to me anyway… The pic I found of an old test pattern above is how I remembered them! I could never figure out why there was always of picture of an Indian though. Alas…one more unexplained mystery of life! Besides the one “generic” test pattern pictured below, I found a couple of others that will really “tickle the fancy” of fellow baby Boomers! Check ‘em out below!