Here's Looking at You, Kids
For three decades, the fluoroscope was a shoe salesman's best friend
- By Karen Larkins
- Smithsonian magazine, July 2003, Subscribe
If you were born anywhere between 1920 and about 1950, you probably recall an odd-looking cabinet that once lured customers into shoe stores across the country.
The shoe-fitting fluoroscope used cutting-edge technology—the x-ray—to reveal the bones and soft tissue of the foot inside the shoe, ostensibly for a better fit. For three decades beginning in the mid-1920s, millions of children and adults in the United States, Europe and other parts of the world peered into the machines for an inside view of their usually wiggling toes.
In 1986, the National Museum of American History acquired a fluoroscope, one of perhaps only a handful extant, from a shoe store in northern Ohio. The mid-1930s vintage, walnut-cabinet machine was one of thousands produced by the Adrian X-Ray Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a leading manufacturer of the devices.
From the start, the fluoroscope, invoking the authority of modern science and technology to sell more shoes, functioned more as sales gimmick than fitting aid. O. C. Hartridge, who founded the other major fluoroscope manufacturer, England’s Pedoscope Company, understood the power of this marketing ploy. The machines, he wrote in 1937, proved a "valuable ally of the retailer. By enabling him to demonstrate the correctness of his fitting, it permits him to impress customers with the reliability of his service; and in those rare instances where people insist on having shoes that are wrong, it puts the onus on them."
Children, in particular, loved the quirky machines. Fluoroscopes proved "as attractive and exciting to little customers as ‘free balloons and all-day suckers,’" wrote Jacalyn Duffin and Charles R. R. Hayter, in their journal article "Baring the Sole: The Rise and Fall of the Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope." Paul Frame, a health physicist with Oak Ridge Associated Universities, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, recalls his friends in Toronto, where he grew up, going into shoe stores just to stick their feet in the machines: "Seeing the greenish yellow image of your bones was great fun."
The device reached its peak of popularity in the early 1950s, with some 10,000 in use in shoe stores in the United States. Then, as concerns about the potentially damaging effects of radiation grew, the machines began to disappear. (Researchers have yet to determine whether the machine was responsible for any ill effects.) Smithsonian curator Ramunas Kondratas says the fluoroscope represents "the triumph of salesmanship over common sense and a lack of knowledge about the health consequences of certain technologies." In 1957, Pennsylvania became the first state to ban the machines. By the mid-1960s, they were history.
How do people react today when they encounter a fluoroscope? It’s mostly a matter of age. Jim Connor, a curator at the National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where one is on display, says that "visitors over 50 have a flashback experience as they recognize the device. These things are real memory triggers."
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Comments (15)
I am the owner of a 106 year old shoe store in Greenville, Mississippi. We have a flouroscope exactly like the one pictured here. It has been in the upstairs rooms above the shoe store for over 50 years. It would be nice to find it a good home.
Posted by michael sherman on June 25,2012 | 12:42 PM
I grew up in Kenmore, NY and it was a Saturday ritual to take our 10 cent allowance and buy penny candy at a candy store on Kenmore Ave and then go to the show. On the way home we would stop and see the nice man at the Buster Brown shoe store, get our feet x-rayed and get our free prize. I think I probably did this along with a few friends, at least twice a month for probably 2 years. This was back in the early 50's. So far no cancer but who know about the future? PS the best prize was the froggy clicker. It had some kind of black goo that the base would stick to. When it came loose the froggy would click and jump. When we were tired of the toy we would dig out the black goo and chew it like gum.
Posted by Patricia Concannon on March 22,2012 | 09:00 PM
I got zapped sometime in the 1950s at the Buster Brown store in Greensboro, NC. I'm thankful now that my family was too poor to buy me too many new shoes. I'm sure one day we'll learn that those airport scanners are too toxic as well, but never mind, none of us will be able to prove anything in time to be compensated. That's the American way.
Posted by Susan Vaughan on March 19,2012 | 11:28 PM
We used to get my shoes at a shoe store on Third Street in Santa Monica, California. Buster Brown Shoes gave redeemable tokens and featured an X-Ray viewer where you could wiggle your toes in the green screen at the base of the machine. Wouldn't it be great to file a class-action suit for damage to my feet that happened sixty years ago.
Posted by DeWayne Stark on January 16,2012 | 12:35 PM
I was born in 1946 and during the 1950s lived in a small town in central Texas. The best shoe store in town (maybe the only one) where my family shopped had one of the Adrian machines pictured with this article. My younger sister and I loved to watch the x-ray images of our feet through the view ports. Neither of us has had any radiation-related foot problems, although my sister has had breast cancer and, as a little girl, her chest would have been very near the top of the machine.
Posted by Alan Locklear on January 10,2012 | 02:10 AM
I was born in 1970 and lived in Kenosha, WI; and I swear I recall a shoe store in Antioch, IL that still used one of these machines in the early 70's. My Grandma lived in Antioch, and we frequently bought shoes at this store. I can't remember for the life of me what the name of the store was, but I sure remember standing on a contraption, putting my feet into it, and looking down at the bones of my feet through the viewfinder. I was probably 5 years of age or less at the time.
I also remember going back to that store later on and seeing the machine there, but it wasn't working anymore... or at least that's what they told me!
Posted by Rick Aiello on December 13,2011 | 04:39 AM
I was born in 1940 near St Louis, MO . All the major department stores had these and I used them (or my mother used them on me) many, many times over the years.
I suffered no ill effects except that, about five years ago, a podiatrist told me I had been wearing the wrong size shoes for over 50+ years. (This is a TRUE story)
As a teenager I wore a size 11B. They do not even make the narrow B size anymore as far as non custom shoes are concerned. But the podiatrist, in response to my complaint about a crooked toe, told me that my right foot is an 11.5 and my left might be (?) considered an 11 but that the right thing to do was to buy the bigger size . Too late now. Can't fix it without surgery but wear a toe seperator.
Posted by Joe Turner on September 14,2011 | 05:44 PM
As I was about to have some teeth x-rayed at the dentist's this morning, I mentioned that as a child it was a big treat to view the bones in my feet in shoe stores in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This dentist, whom I'd guess was in his late 40s, had never heard of this practice.
When I was in grade school, it seemed the only proper way to be fitted for shoes. Even so, I often turned it into play time while my mother was shopping elsewhere. What fun to wriggle my toes! No shoe was bought then without checking first to see if toe bones were adversely pinched together--a far more important test of fit than merely the feel.
I was born in 1941, but cannot remember when or under what circumstances these machines were removed from shops. I'm in good health today and cancer has never been detected.
Posted by Nancy Kaufmann on August 16,2011 | 07:15 PM
I was born August 5th 1954 with a cleft palate and an inguinal hernia. My mother told me that my pediatricians attributed those birth defects to her having her feet x-rayed with a shoe fitting fluoroscope when she was pregnant with me. Evidently the machine leaked a certain amount of radiation. Did anyone else have this happen to them?
Posted by Phillip Davis on May 27,2011 | 10:36 PM
I worked as a sales assisstant when I was a teenager in a shoe shop with one of these machines. This was in the Uk in the early 70's. There was another young assisstant and we quite often messed around with this machine as well as using it on customers. Does anyone know if the shop assisstants were at risk? I expect the older uses of these machines are not necessarily computer literate. So if anyonehas any older relatives who used these machines can you ask them? Perhaps we may get a clearer understanding of the potential risks.
Posted by Marianne Badminton on March 17,2011 | 06:49 PM
I looked up these machines because my mother used to talk about them - probably from the 1930's - probably in the south, Fla. or Tn. In her 70's she developed thyroid cancer and I was just wondering.
I can't fix it but would like to know. My brothers and I used those machines in Ohio in the 50's - I have thyroid disease but it may not be related.
Posted by Pam Costa on March 15,2011 | 12:47 PM
the lessons of the shoe fitting device should be remembered when going to the airport. this video discusses the risks associated with the new screening devices
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS0UxXDNs4w
Posted by paul on December 26,2010 | 02:31 AM
I was born in 1054 and I spend a considerable time using the machine to check my feet. At the age of 37 I developed thyroid cancer and have wondered if there was any connection to the radiation I received. But,I have never seen any data to help me with that problem. MD Anderson Cancer said that my cancer was a fluke--probably not genetic.
Posted by Clyde Elder on June 11,2010 | 09:59 PM
I'm 69. My one sister is 70. When I was small I was told that I had fallen arches and needed orthopedic shoes. I remember looking at my feet though these machines. My sister and I would spend a lot of time doing so while our Mom would be dealing with the salesman. In Jan of 1996 my sister had to have her left leg amputated because she developed sarcomma cancer in her ankle. One of the risks for sarcomma, she was told is radiation. The first thing that I thought of was those machines. She's also had the cancer come back. Once in her lung, 2 years ago and in her thyoid a few months later. Has anyone found a link that would show this cancer could be tied to these machines. I haven't been able to find anything on line about it. We would take turns looking at our feet. They had a port for the salesman that we would look in while the other had their feet in there. I have a good memory of things long ago. I also remember when, all of a sudden the machines were gone. I'll always be convinced that they caused my sisters cancer. She was mostly a homemaker except for some offic type work. Not much risk there.
Posted by John T Walsh on June 8,2010 | 10:55 AM