The test card was designed by Finn Hendil for Philips in Copenhagen, about 40 years ago.
Newly qualified as an electronics engineer, Finn's mother sent him along to Philips, and Philips promptly gave him a rather important task: to find the most efficient wavelengths for the red, green and blue of colour television.
When the wavelengths were decided, it had to be shown how they mixed, how far they could be made to produce true colours and how finely detailed they could show a picture, therefore a test-card was required.
So Finn started to list all the abilities of wavelengths, arranging colours and stripes, using every artistic nerve he possessed.. He created endless annotated pencil drawings on graph-paper, and together with his assistant, produced big coloured pictures of his designs. The two of them would sit and look at the pictures, and correct the proportions and placements.
When the Test-Card was finally finished, it was universally accepted as the best one in the world, for its beauty perhaps, but also because the ability to broadcast such a picture was unique to Philips, so all the competitors in TV tried to make their wavelengths as fine as the Test-Card proved they could be.
Many countries all over the world bought the Test-card, and the image became an icon, and is now used on many different design objects.
Frits Vink was very much inspired by the Test-card and created the first Testpage clock for NeXtime in 2005. Others have tried to copy the clock, but copyright protects the original Testpage clock.
Press release Sept 2010 - History of the test card.pdf
