50 years of Test Card F

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y276/pleccy2000/TCF-Original.jpg

Next Sunday, 2nd July, marks the 50th anniversary of the first transmission of the BBC's famous first colour test card, Test Card F featuring Carole Hersee and Bubbles the Clown.

Not that I'm expecting the BBC to mark the anniversary in any way, but I think it would be nice if some sort of mention was made of it's 50th anniversary, considering it's such a well known part of British TV history, having been broadcast for over 70,000 hours since it's first appearance.

I think Wimbledon will the focus of celebrations for Colour TV in the UK. It was the first major colour TV broadcast in the UK 50 years ago (and Wimbledon celebrates its 90th radio anniversary and 80th TV anniversary this year I believe)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/research/programming/wimbledon

Point of order, Test Card F was a collaboration between the BBC, ITA, EEA, and BREMA (British Radio Electronics Manufacturers Association). It was not a BBC device per se.

Of course the BBC were the first to transmit it, because BBC 2 was the first UK (and European) channel to go 625/colour.

During the early 70s, there were long periods of the day when it was seen simultaneously on all three channels.

ITV adopted daytime TV much earlier than the Beeb, so it fell out of use. When the IBA streamlined its technical arrangements for out of hours trade test provision in the late 70s, it produced its own in house electronically generated card, ETP-1. That replaced TCF that back then was sourced from slides, and therefore a slide scanner.
No problem for the Beeb, because they used their highly maintained ones at TVC. Remember the IBA and not the ITV companies were responsible for test card broadcasts, and these came from the IBA's regional control rooms. Therefore, there was a significant maintenance and manpower cost for the IBA to continue with TCF.

ETP-1 was adopted for C4 in 1982, and really came to be known as the C4 Test Card

Further reading

http://www.radios-tv.co.uk/Pembers/Test-Cards/Test-Card-Technical.html#TCF

If anything we might get a small package on BBC Breakfast marking the occasion. Unless we get treated to a sting of some kind.

If BBC Breakfast attempt anything I'll be watching with trepidation. I can almost hear the inaccuracies and misconceptions in my head now !

BBC Nations Pres Depts are our only hope I think !

I hope Duncan's seen my post about the sting suggestion and passed it on to the relevant people!

I think Carol Hersee, the girl with the clown, was interviewed on BBC South Today some years ago, presumably for a similar anniversary. I suppose there's a chance that could happen again. Carol was the daughter of one of the engineers that designed the card AIUI. They needed a colour photograph as skintone is quite tricky to line up properly. The photo is still incorporated into the current HD testcard which is still shown on BBC TWO as part of the overnight barker. I believe it's officially known as Testcard X and comes accompanied with a 5.1 sound test sequence. Testcard X replaced Testcard W, which was the first 16:9 aspect ratio card.

Some years ago, they re-positioned the photograph so the X on the blackboard is at the centre of the screen.

TCW was SD - the current test card is HD (the frequency gratings are different)

Also the current HD test card is 16:9 precisely, whereas TCW, the older SD one, was 'wider' as 720x576 is slightly wider than 16:9.

The full original photo of Carol, and its story is in the link I provided

Some further technical info on the development of Test Card W (and Test Card J, the 4:3 version) at
https://web.archive.org/web/20120818143209/http://www.barney-wol.net:80/video/video.html

Was just looking for that website - brilliant information on all the cards. Shame it's no longer online.

TCF makes an appearance in this BBC montage - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-40462275/fifty-years-of-colour-tv