OK we know that Lego comes from there, and much bacon, and Carlsberg and cop shows with glamourous women wearing sensible winter jumpers (even the princess on the stamps wears one) – but as well as not realising until Sinner pointed out to me that ortofon turntable cartridges/styli are made there, the Philips electronic test card was designed in Denmark and not Holland! It is still used today but altered for digital transmission (by removing some biits and adding scrolling text/moving stuff as a crashed MPEG encoder will jam on the last still frame and a static testcard would hide this fault..)
in 1985 summer I was stuck at home and only had TV to watch as where I lived wasn’t too safe to walk around on your own as ethnic minority teen, and I had this Japanese b&W set which also had VHF band I and very strong gain on its internal antenna. Band I was ceased for telly in the UK and was a different standard anyway, but that year had lots of sporadic E / tropo that maks VHF radio waves go much further.
So I was surprised to see on the VHF band this testcard, I knew the BBC2 sometimes used it but ours was adapted and this one said “TELEVERKET” at the top and “NORGE” at the bottom. Of course there was no Internet then and my family couldn’t even afford the telephone so I had to look through various atlases until I worked out I was watching Norweigian TV. (TELEVERKET was the national telephone company, in many European countries they operated the networks to the broadcasting transmitters and also the towers) But I can see now why Sinner in his teens already had was helping set up the anarchist bookshop as there wasn’t daytime TV to distract him :laugh_at:
The content and layout of the pattern was designed in the Philips TV laboratory in Copenhagen by chief engineer Erik Helmer Nielsen in 1968. The equipment, PM5544, which generates the pattern, was then made by his assistant engineer Finn Hendil in 1968-69.[1]
Sadly Finn Hendil passed away in 2011, but Erik is still around (but even he struggles with digital video codecs)
http://forum.recordere.dk/forum_posts.asp?TID=81564&title=omkode-drk-ts-fil-til-dvd-format
this is what I saw (a German dude photographed it from his country)
in NO and DK the card said TELEVERKET when the national telecom company was sending the signal (TV programmes sometimes did not start until later in the day). This was because of old valve TV’s which needed to be warmed up and set up correctly to get the best signal so early risers would use the testcard for this, and also that in electronics shops the engineers could adjust their sets before they were sold to customers.
Just before the days television would start, the studio engineers in the Lines Area could operate a key to switch their studio output to the TX, there would be a slight jump in the picture and the testcard would change to NRK or Danmarks Radio. Then a clock would appear and an announcer and graphics would explain what was on TV today.
You can still DX the new digital telly but these days its equally crap across the EU so not sure if worth doing.
