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History

See How They Fit
by Samantha Bell

Your toes pinch tightly together as you stuff them into your favorite pair of tennis shoes. Your feet are getting bigger. It's time to buy a new favorite pair.

There are different ways of finding a pair of shoes that fit just right. Some stores are set up so you can help yourself. You find the type of shoes that you want and try on several sizes, walking up and down the aisle to test whether the shoes are too narrow or too wide. Other stores have workers, or employees, trained to measure your foot with a metal scale. You push your heel against the back of the scale, and your toe touches a number on the scale. This number shows you the size of the shoe that you will need.

In the 1920's, inventors found a different way to see just how well shoes fit—that is, they really could view the fit! Shoe salesmen used a type of x-ray unit, which would show the bones of the foot inside the shoe. It worked by using a fluoroscope, a type of x-ray tube. The child stood on a platform with his feet in a slot above the fluoroscope.

The fluoroscope sent x-rays through the bottom of the shoes and feet to a fluorescent plate, where the shoes and bones would appear as a shadow image. Most shoe-fitting fluoroscopes had three places to look through to see the image, so the child, the parent, and the salesman could all look at it at the same time.

What fun it must have been to see the bones of the toes right through the shoe! Using the fluoroscope was a good way for the salesmen to sell more shoes. Children enjoyed looking inside their feet, and mothers were confident the shoes fit well. But if these machines were that helpful, why don't you use one when you buy new shoes?

During the time the x-ray units were in stores, scientists learned that x-rays could be very harmful to people. They discovered that high levels of radiation could kill living tissue inside the human body and even cause death. A few of the shoe salesmen who used the fluoroscope many times a day faced health problems from being exposed to too many x-rays. To be on the safe side, doctors recommended that people avoid even small exposures unless medically necessary.

Though fluoroscopes were designed to help sell footwear, these devices had to go. Thirty-three states banned the use of these machines; this meant that stores in these states were not allowed to use them at all. Seventeen other states passed laws which made it very difficult to use fluoroscopes. By the mid-1960s, they were history. Nonetheless, some shoe-fitting fluoroscopes still exist today. You can find them in museums, safely on display.

Places Where You Can See a Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope Today:
The Museum of Health Care, Kingston, Ontario

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C

Oak Ridge Associated Universities' Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota

University of Toronto Museum of Scientific Instruments, Toronto, Ontario

Professional Consultation:
Frame, Paul, Ph.D., C.H.P. Health physics instructor in the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education's Professional Training Programs; Recipient of the Robert S. Landauer award for distinguished contribution to the field of radiological physics and radiation health protection (1999); Curator of the Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum Collection at the Professional Training Programs facility in Oak Ridge, deemed the official repository for historical radiological instruments and devices by the Health Physics Society. December 2005, February 2006.

Resources:
Mulcahy, Robert. Medical Technology: Inventing the Instruments. MN: The Oliver Press, Inc., 1997.

McClafferty, Carla Killough. The Head Bone's Connected to the Neck Bone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Internet Sites:
http://imaging-radiology-oncology-technologist.advanceweb.com/Common/Editorial/editorial.aspx?CC=57800

http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2003/july/object.php

http://www.ohiokids.org/tz/feb02-image.shtml

http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm

http://www.marquis-kyle.com.au/mt/000681.htm

Samantha Bell is a homeschooling mother of four children. In the past she has worked as an after-school teacher and private tutor. Today she enjoys writing and creating art. You can view some of her work at www.art-made-easy.com.