What Happened to the Shoe Store X-Ray Machine?

Shoe stores once had something most people today would find hard to believe.  They used X-Ray machines so you could see the bones in your feet while trying on a new pair of shoes.

These machines, called Fluroscopes, were a common part of the shoe-buying  experience.  Children wold slide their feet into the cabinet and look through the viewer to watch their toes move inside the shoe.  It felt modern and scientific.  However, by the 1960s and early 1970s, they were removed from stores. 

The Adrian shoe fluoroscope was a popular 1920s-1859s retail device that used X-rays to show customers a live fluoroscopic image of their foot bones inside new shoes.  Manufactured by the M.B. Adrian Company & Sons in Milwaukee Wisconsin these wooden cabinet machines typically featured three viewing ports and operated with minimal shielding.   Due to significant radiation leakage and safety concerns, they were banned in the U.S. starting in 1957.

Customers stood on a platform and placed their feet into a slot at the base of a roughly four-foot tall wooden cabinet to view a 10-20 second live image, often used for children's shoes.  The machine used strong, unshielded X-ray tubes, often running between 500-700 watts emitting significant radiation for the user and particularly the salesperson.

The origin was based on a 1919 patent by Dr. Jacob Lowe with over 10,000 units sold in the United States though its demise increased awareness of radiation risks, pressure from medical societies and insurance companies led to bans, starting with Pensylvania in 1957 and spreading throughout the country by the 1960s.  These machines were found to offer negligible fitting benefits and posed a hazard to customers and staff.  

These devices, while revolutionary at the time, were quickly replaced by manual measurement techniques as radiation safety regulations tightened. 

Adrian Special