[Excerpt from Episode 2 of Fallout 4]

Well, as promised, here's a quick little Xtra Kredit video on the origins of that Stand By loading screen. Now unlike most of my other Xtra Kredit videos, you might only be seeing this screen for the entirety of the video, but that's cool. I'll give you an oral history in 3 minutes or less and it's pretty interesting.

So as I mentioned in the excerpt from Episode 2 of my Fallout 4 series, that "stand by" screen was originally called the Indian-head test pattern. It was almost exclusively used in the North America from the 1940's through the 1960's with a few exceptions. It was also used in Canada and a few British colonies, such as Rhodesia at the time, and a small handful of Central and South American countries.

But what is it exactly? Well, it was a projection pattern that was actually built into monoscope vacuum tubes and Kinetoscopes of the cameras that were used by television and film studios during that era. It was built into the cameras to allow immediate calibration of focus and aspect ratios from the moment the camera was turned on. A broadcast engineer could look at the projection and make any adjustments necessary to framing, contrast, white balance, and a host of other production measurements to ensure the picture was perfect. It also allowed syncing between television cameras and film cameras since they normally used different aspect ratios. And it was even broadcast during off hours to home television users and repair shops so they could make similar adjustments to their own units, along with that annoying sine wave tone that indicated a station had gone off the air.

[sine wave tone] ...Yeah, aren't you glad those days are long-gone?

So where does the name come from anyway? Well, we're looking at Bethesda's Fallout 4 version here. Let's take a look at the original. You can clearly see the Indian-head now, which of course is politically incorrect these days. And rightly so since the term Indian was coined after a huge navigational blunder on the part of Christopher Columbus who was trying to make it over to the country of India by sailing West instead of around the horn of Africa. Somehow the epithet stuck all the way until the early 1970's. Kind of amazing actually.

Although the artist from RCA pictures who sketched the Indian head did so with noble intentions way back in 1939 in an attempt to honor the indigenous peoples of America. The head he sketched included all the layers of contrast necessary to adjust brightness and differential gain. And it has since become a cultural icon of the early days of black and white television.

And there ya go. Now whenever you see that Please Stand By loading screen in Fallout games, you'll know the true origins of the test card. Hope you enjoyed this Xtra Kredit episode. If you want to see more, I'll leave a link in the description or the I-card above to the playlist. And if you haven't already, be sure to check out my Fallout 4 trivia walkthrough series as well. Lots of cool information within the context of the gameplay.

Slap a like on the video and subscribe if you haven't and we'll see you next time on the Skooled Zone... Stay smart!