As a cultural icon[edit]
An actual Indian-head test card, the pattern as printed on art-grade white cardboard, was only of secondary importance to television system adjustment, but many of them were saved as souvenirs, works of found art, and inadvertent mandalas. By contrast, nearly all of the hard-to-open, steel-shielded, vacuum glass monoscope tubes were junked with their hidden Indian-head test pattern target plates still inside. The monoscope target plates were also small, a few inches in size, while the showy camera test cards were sized on the order of 1.5 by 2 feet (0.46 by 0.61 m), making them natural keepers for picture-framed wall display.[citation needed]
The original art work for the Indian Chief portrait was completed for RCA's research engineers by an artist named Brooks on August 23, 1938. The original portrait was done in pencil, charcoal, ink and zinc oxide. For about a year the Indian portrait was televised in the laboratory as the entire test pattern. It was later incorporated into the pattern of calibrated lines and shapes. The original portrait measures eight inches (20 cm) across as a circular image containing several identifiable shades of gray, and some detail in the feathers. There is also some Zone 8 texture in the white feathering and some Zone 2 texture in the black hair. The master art for both the portrait and the pattern design was discovered in a dumpster by a wrecking crew worker as the old RCA factory in Harrison, New Jersey was being demolished in 1970. The worker kept the art for over 30 years before selling it to a test pattern collector.[9]
The Indian-head test pattern became obsolete in the 1960s with the debut of color television; from that point onward, an alternate test card of color bars became the test card of choice. Since the 1990s, most television stations in the United States have broadcast continuously without regular sign-offs, instead running infomercials, networked overnight news shows, syndicated re-runs, cartoons, or old movies; thus, the broadcast of test patterns has become mostly obsolete (though they are still used in post production and broadcast facilities to check color and signal paths). Nevertheless, the Indian-head test pattern persists as a symbol of early television. A variant of the card appeared on theatrical release posters for Weird Al Yankovic's 1989 film UHF. It was sold as a night-light from 1997 to 2005 by the Archie McPhee company,[10] reminiscent of the times when a fairly common late-night experience was to fall asleep while watching the late movie, only to awaken to the characteristic sine wave tone accompanying the Indian-head test pattern on a black-and-white TV screen. The test card had also featured in the opening sequence of the early 1960s science fiction anthology The Outer Limits.[11] Decades later, it was popularized as the loading screen for the Fallout series video games, and a part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website.[12]
Many of the nation's television stations used the image of the Indian-head card to be their final image broadcast when they signed off their analog signals for the final time between February 17 and June 12, 2009, as part of the United States digital television transition.[citation needed]
