TFTP Special: TV Test Patterns (1950s/1960s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MSTS1'

For today's Labor Day holiday, we've got a post that will give the normal old TV clips the day off. This is not a TV program clip per se, but it is a type of TV content from the past that was very prevalent in TV's early days and has completely disappeared now: the TV test pattern.

Test patterns were used by television engineers to make sure that the transmitted and televised image being broadcast was adequate from a technical standpoint. This is why these test patterns have the patterns of lines of different thicknesses and lengths, the concentric circles, the areas of different gradations of shading--so that engineers could tweak settings and make adjustments prior to a station signing on for the broadcast day.

The test patterns featured here are reproduced from versions found in print books, but since they were a stationary element they are more or less as viewers would have seen them on the air. Test patterns would have appeared for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours before the station actually signed on with programming (which in the early days of TV may not be until mid-morning, midday, or even in the earliest days early-evening). Most test patterns had call letters or some other identifying mark for the station, as can be seen in most of the test patterns featured in this clip; these are all from varying periods in the 1950s and 1960s.