A thread about--test pattern instrumentals.

Self | 5/30/'08 | Zionist Conspirator

[Zionist Conspirator]

Those of you of a certain age will recall a time when TV stations didn't stay on the air constantly but signed off late at night (with the National Anthem) and signed on again early in the morning. And in those days televisions had tuning buttons on them that had to be adjusted by hand so the snowy signals from far away could come in as clearly as possible.

Each morning the station would begin the day with a "test pattern" (usually with an Indian's head somewhere about for whatever reason) so the viewer could tune his set for the day (including getting the color right). Anyway, during these fifteen minutes or so of the test pattern the station would play the most beautiful, delightful music--always instrumental and perhaps what would be called "easy listening."

Ever since getting on the Internet I've been trying to find material on these test pattern instrumentals. Unfortunately, their title and performers were never given so it's very hard to search for them on YouTube or Napster. Just by accident I know a couple of them: Java by Al Hirt and That Happy Feeling by Bert Kaempfert (the holy grail of all test pattern instrumentals, available on YouTube), but there are so many more that I can remember but whose titles or performers I am totally ignorant of.

One in particular I've been thinking of lately is one that was (I believe) featured on an episode of "I Love Lucy" when Ricky sang in in full "native" costume (of course, the test patterns only used the instrumental version). I've tried to find that episode of "I Love Lucy" online just so I could get an idea of the title and look for it.

Is there anyone else out there who has a nostalgia for these long-departed phenomena of those days? Does anyone else know any specific titles or performers?

[JoJo Gunn]

Strange test pattern. I didn’t know they had widescreen back then. :)

[chimera]

Makes sense. Persistence would have to be short otherwise you’d have a lot of “ghost image” overlay. Sorry, too much time with the old-style graphics terminals, which for vector stroke graphics depended on high-persistence phosphors (although there was an “erase” key, how did that work?).

[grey_whiskers]

Captain Chesapeake was late 60's or early 70's I think, and played old cartoons in the after-school time slot.

Captain 20 was on channel 20 and was a nerdy looking guy with fake Spock ears and futuristic uniform; he played even worse stuff than Captain Chesapeake -- think Ultraman and the like.

'Full Disclosure' is not a show, but a disclaimer I sometimes put on my posts.

Sorry to say, I do not remember Buddy Dean.

The highlight of Captain Chesapeake was the screenshot of the waters of the Chesapeake Bay behind him, artificially rocked around to try to make it look like the in-studio set was bobbing aboard a boat. One day the folks moving the film of the water got a bit carried away, and it turned upside down for a moment.

Cheers!

[Erasmus]

There were vector graphics screens with short to medium persistence, but they needed constant refreshing from a digital memory of the currently defined strokes.

Tektronix invented an indefinite-persistence tube; the phosphor wasn’t really indefinite persistence, but there was a special electrical screen behind the phosphor that got charged wherever the phosphor was written by the electron beam, and then was magically able to continually produce electrons which moved forward to the phosphor, thus maintaining the illumination wherever the beam had written. A quick pulse of the appropriate voltage erased the electrical screen and thus erased the image being produced on the phosphor.

Originally used in the Tek storage oscilloscopes ca. 1960, these tubes were later used in a series of vector-graphic computer terminals and small standalone computers.

I played a very early “lunar lander” on a Tek 4051, which had a Basic interpreter in it. The lunar landscape would be created at random and then written on the tube. The lander itself would be portrayed with a low-intensity non-storage beam strength and updated as fast as possible. Its position of course was computed in real time in accordance with physical laws and your inputs through the keyboard. Once you landed—crash or otherwise—it would be written permanently, until you asked for a new game or hit a manual erase.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I loved Captain Kangaroo! I grew up watching him, and continued to do so long after I had "outgrown" him. What a show! No noisy "peanut gallery," no spelling or arithmetic drills--just gentle entertainment. CK is the most underappreciated show in in television history, and it is a shame that all the surviving shows aren't on DVD or tape for everyone to enjoy.

One of my favorite parts of CK were the little musical features (accompanied by puppets or paper cutouts). Remember Angus MacFergus MacTavish Dundee? Or Sean Sean the Leprechaun? Or Herkimer the Lonely Doll (sung by Sterling Holloway)? Or Alfred the Air-Sick Eagle? Or going to the Palace with Alice to see the Changing of the Guard? Or the Two-Penny Piper ("all the children love him so / for two pennies he will blow / a tune of romance / so hey can dance")? And something that always made me tear up--the old puppet maker whose puppets came to life.

BTW, I got my love of classical music from Bunny Rabbit playing Mozart's Alla Turca Allegretto and Chopin's Black Key Etude!

If you're interested, YouTube has a video of the Banana Man's last appearance on Cap'n 'Roo.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I’m sorry. I am one of the guilty ones.

Never mind. We're all having so much fun!

As long as the liberals are into turning back the clock to pre-industrial times, do you suppose they might consider bringing back the Fifties?

[chimera]

We had those Tek 4051s in our department in the late '70s. I remember getting an 'A' in one of my reactor physics courses in grad school by turning in some homework assignments on transfer functions that had the functions plotted on the graphics terminal. There was a "print" switch that would print the screen on the old thermal-style plotting paper. Nobody else in the class knew how to use them so the instructor was impressed. How's that for brown-nosing the prof? :-)

We had a Tek "storage" scope that I think worked on the same principle. I remember asking their local sales engineer how their scope could "capture" nanosecond-range rise times, and he spilled the beans about how it wasn't digitally stored, but the voltage was stored on a grid that was read out onto the screen. Worked pretty well except as time passed it got a little ragged-looking, especially if you fiddled with the intensity dial. It also had a "persistence" dial that could help you keep the image on the screen until you got your scope camera set up to take a picture of the display. Them were the oooooold days...

[Bigg Red]

As long as the liberals are into turning back the clock to pre-industrial times, do you suppose they might consider bringing back the Fifties?

^^^
Oh, heavens, no! What? And let all of those family values run rampant again?

[Bigg Red]

Sorry to say, I do not remember Buddy Dean.

&&
Why, then, you are just a child!! :-)