 | By Daniele Pitarresi and Eric Schuenemann In 1991, and again in 1992, GPT won a Queen's Award for Industry, a sort of corporate honour given in the UK to organizations successful in innovation, exports, etc. After this, they started to produce these cards, which, as for the Chorley test cards, were used to test the functionality of the payphones before exporting them in other countries. The Queen's Awards were printed both on magnetic cards and, later, on chip cards and, apart this difference, have overprints which identify them. As for the chip cards, we can group them into four sections: - test cards with code 1ENG + a letter in sequence + 6 digits;
 - generic tests with code CS + 6 digits, which have different units overprinted on the front of the card;
 - test cards with code 16 + 6 digits, commonly called GPT 16, with a progressive number related to the country of destination;
 - test cards without code on back, but overprinted on front.
We are going to start an accurate catalogation of these cards. In the meantime, we reproduce here some examples, and the codes of the cards 1ENG actually known; as for our knownledge, no test card over 1ENGG code should exist. |
