The Test Card Girl: The Lasting Legacy of Test Card F | An AMTV Documentary

The Beeb made a new test card for UHD TVs, Test Card M

😅1

Test Card X

Next: SMPTE test cards

I seem to remember that a different test card (or static image) was transmitted on BBC 2 before and during colour test transmissions in the late 1960s, early in the evening before normal programmes. Is that right? It was often accompanied by short colour films.

Carol holds the record for being the longest person ever to appear on television

Talking of Ceefax, I actually appeared on Channel 4 teletext service during Easter one year.

Well when I say me, it was an Easter picture I did that appeared on screen with my name under it.

Carol also appeared in an episode of QI when they were celebrating British television

I used to love watching pages from Ceefax as we didnt have a Ceefax ready TV. Once we finally got one I was so excited. Playing Bamboozle every morning before school and checking the TV Guide. The simple joys....

Thanks for posting…I first remember seeing test card F I believe in 1967 on BBC2, I can remember as a child trying to figure out the different colours by their shading, on our very old Sobell black&white TV😄

Carol kept me company on many a night. Back then, if you were awake during the early hours of the morning, either poorly or just wide awake, you would feel so isolated and alone. But this test card would make you feel that little less lonely.

As a teenager I once saw Test Card F in real life in the early 1980s.

The TV sports series Superstars was being filmed in my town, and at the local swimming pool I saw a TV camera pointed at a large print of the card, propped up like a photo frame.

One interesting feature was that the small black letterbox-shaped rectangle above the photo was actually a cutout hole to a small black box attached to the back of the card.

I assumed that this was a way of ensuring that the rectangle was pure black, avoiding any reflections otherwise present on the printed card.

My dad Geoffrey plackett used to pick music for test card he was a prog controller

Love this post! Here in the US, We never had a photo image in the Test Pattern, only line scales.

I can still remember back when I was in my early teens I would sometimes stay up watching late shows on the TV and quite often fell asleep on the sofa until that high pitched tone would suddenly wake me up. I often thought those four grid things in the corners looked like speakers, heaven knows why. I guess that was my imagination back then as a kid. That clown doll did look terrifying though I will admit. But it's such an iconic image from TV broadcasting back in the day. Another great childhood memory for many of us.

using a picture of a girl as a way to test a visual medium seems to be some sort of long tradition in the craft - see "shirley cards", "china girl" reel leaders and Lena Forsén, for example.

Oh man, I remember that Ceefax - it was when I was like 8 or so (2002) and it was like discovering a secret world. There was a specific button on the remote, and 4(?) tabs could be seen, news weather and possibly a catalogue? No idea about the fourth. That… sent me back.

As an American who got scared of WAY too many things as a child, I can tell you right now that this thing would’ve haunted my dreams

Yesterday I saw a test card on bbc one during the night I have a photo of it

MMMXXIIIVVIIVMXXX - not to be confused with 1992
weirdos! love being complicated to make them think it is more complicated than it is

7000 hours!! no way!! much much MUCH more than that!!!!!

knew life on mars would be mentioned

Just scanning the airwaves for TV signals on the Dutch coast and then running into Test Card F was always something special. I instantly knew I was recieving something from the UK and it was a nice change of scenery across all of the boring Philips and Telefunken cards locally.

It’s weird. I’ve watched compilations of BBC temporary faults and I’ve never seen this image

The legend that is the BBC Testcard girl Carol Hersee.
I heard years ago that the "X" on the blackboard marked the centre of the Testcard. 🤔 😂

I never knew their were other versions, and when I see this video I thought how the fuck cam this be iconic, being born in the early eighties I only remember the gastly single tone one that beat ya ear drums into submission, bug now i can see why

there was a Frank Sidebottom version of test card F. It was transmitted in the early 2000s on Granada ITV

Was it really stock music or specially recorded music for this very use.

In this day and age of myriad 24 hour a day TV channels - try explaining the concept of the test card to a kid today!

Testcard G . Adam on the bog taking a Crap while Playing Checkers lol 😂

I wonder 🤔 how many noughts and crosses games did Carol and the clown 🤡 play? 😂

In the us its not called knots and crosses its called tic tac toe

I had a screenshot (might still have it somewhere) of a BBC website 500 error. Like the 404 error, it featured the test card, but with flames in place of the blue background. Someone must have had a great laugh making that for something only a few people would ever see.

139k In 2 Years Bros Mega Washed

There’s a bunch of vacant analog Tv stations that you could use…

Fun Fact: This was parodied once on numberblocks.

This is what people masterbated too before babestation

Not from the UK and I don't recall seeing BBC on international channels on cable, but I've seen Test Card F on the internet probably a couple of times and never thought much of it. You somehow got my attention to watch the whole 22min video about BBC Test Cards and Carole Hersee.

In my country channels typically use either the SMPTE Test Card for NTSC or a modified variant of it (i.e. only the vertical bars, having actors overlaid on the vertical color bars of SMPTE, etc.) along with a 1kHz test tone. Seen that so many times watching TV early morning as a kid and late at night in my teens that when I see the SMPTE color bars even with the volume muted or lowered I can hear that 1kHz test tone in my mind and I would joke about "hearing the color bars" when I encounter it.

Test Card F got so popular that in 2013, E4 parodied it in one of their "Estings".

Can I have the name of the song playing in the background duringchapter one?

If you find a m3u for one of the BBC UHD test channels, you'll still see a 4k HDR varient of test card f being used to this day during what would normally be breaks for things such as trailers or just channel idents.

My first experience of the test card was with life on mars, however I remember it having the tone instead of music (he dreams that she’s talking to him, then he wakes up seeing the static image with the tone, I think), but wouldn’t have been music instead in the 70s?

Born in 1983, I remember this in early 90’s… used to stay up and watch late night films on bbc1 and then I’d fall asleep to the test card lol

The test actually frightened me as a kid as its kind of freaky. The a clown toy doesn't have the friendliest of faces. And the girl looking towards you gave a feeling that sees watching your every more whilst you were alone with her in the room. I'm sure this had a lot of influences on horror films of things coming alive from your TV set.

Great video Adam. Test Card G looks very similar to what was used regularly by RTE in Ireland.

I have to admit that I used to watch the test card when there was nothing else to watch. It brings me back to when I was little.😊

My only interaction with the test card is in Life On Mars. I admit I wasn't fond of it's appearing, because clown. But i understood it's significance in the show. I never knew the history beyond it was the inventor's daughter. it is cool that she actually made the clown herself and apparently still has it. When i was a kid in the the 1980s in the US, the test pattern was the Color Bars. The RCA Indian head pattern is very well known historically as well, but neither have the human element of Test Card F. I can see why people loved it show.

As BBC Radio engineering trainees at Wood Norton in about 1980, we had to edit a rather pretentious programme called, IIRC, "Critics' Choice", in which a group of panellists talked a lot of tripe about some obscure Japanese art-house movie that they'd watched.
My colleagues and I decided it was ripe for parody. Our version - which we made as a programme exercise - was about the test card. We contrasted the idyllic, utopian scene of the little girl and her clown with the menacing, unhuman, functional and angular world surrounding her. We also produced an "English By Radio" episode about swearing that ridiculed the Director General and was, apparently, played to subsequent students by the lecturers who also found it funny.

When I was growing up in the 90s and seeing/hearing the test card used to frighten me. Probably due to the still image of Carol and Bubbles but possibly also due to the one note beeping emitted.