Television test cards, or test patterns as they are commonly called, existed only as a cultural memory by the time I was born. The card was a calibration device; its layout engineered by engineers. If the image on my screen showed a squashed ellipse, you’d call a technician, who would track mud into your living room to adjust the TV’s screen ratio until it was rightly a circle. “While you’re here, I don’t suppose you could add some counter-weight to that wobbly ceiling fan?” you might ask him, not wanting to clean the mud up twice.
The ceiling fan is Sputnik, whose orbit is a balancing act between two constituent forces. Perfect, spherical, and gleaming, the artificial Soviet moon passed over our heads, its forward velocity balanced against the gravitational pull of the earth. After the TV station signs off with the “Star-Spangled Banner” and broadcasts the test card, you go outside, hoping to see the new satellite streak overhead. Like the circle on the TV, an orbit is a détente between the x- and y- axis results in an endless circle. For Sputnik, x- is velocity, y- is gravity. Y- is constant, atmospheric drag decreases x- and the circle slowly crushes into an ellipse. The shiny little moon’s constant “beep beep beep” is silenced by a fiery return to Earth.
The ceiling fan spins silently now. Our affinity for the perfection of this shape is aboriginal. The sun and the moon are our oldest companions, and on their habits we learned to hang our most important activities: planting and harvest, feast and famine, war and peace. Man’s accomplishments can be traced as our mastery and appropriation of the circle and sphere, forms made by the universe with hardly a thought.
Post by Andrew Liebchen
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