Erased: Why Shoe Stores Had 10,000 X-Ray Machines

By the early 1950s, about 10,000 X-ray machines stood in American shoe stores, and children watched their own toe bones on a live screen. For over 20 years nobody properly measured the dose. From Jacob Lowe's Foot-O-Scope in Boston to the first state ban, in Pennsylvania in 1957, this is what the machines were really for, and what happened when someone finally checked. Why did American shoe stores keep ten thousand X-ray machines for children's feet, and what happened once someone finally measured the dose? Chapters 0:00 Look Down at Your Bones 0:34 Mr. Lowe's Crude Device 2:13 The Proof of the Pudding 3:55 Ten Thousand Cabinets 5:28 Twenty Years Without a Number 7:27 What the Cabinet Hid 9:00 Wheeled Out the Front Door 10:34 What Is Left 11:57 Sources and credits Sources Baring the Sole: The Rise and Fall of the Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope (Jacalyn Duffin and Charles R. R. Hayter, Isis, vol. 91, no. 2, pp. 260-282 (University of Chicago Press), 2000): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10967... Method and Means for Visually Determining the Fit of Footwear, US Patent 1,614,988 (filed February 6, 1919; granted January 18, 1927; assigned by mesne assignments to The Adrian Corporation, Inc., of Milwaukee) (Jacob J. Lowe, of Boston, United States Patent Office, via Google Patents, 1927): https://patents.google.com/patent/US1... Foot-O-Scope to Be at Milwaukee (p. 249) and the X-Ray Foot-O-Scope Corp. advertisement 'The proof of the pudding / Here's the proof!' (Boot and Shoe Recorder, vol. 78, no. 15, January 1, 1921, via Internet Archive, 1921): https://archive.org/details/sim_boot-... Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope (ca. 1930-1940) (ORAU Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum Collection): https://www.orau.org/health-physics-m... When X-Rays Were All the Rage, a Trip to the Shoe Store Was Dangerously Illuminating (Allison Marsh, IEEE Spectrum, 2020): https://spectrum.ieee.org/when-xrays-... FDA reviews history of 'shoe-fitting fluoroscope' (on FDA historian Vanessa Burrows's 'Radiating Shoe Sales') (Brian Casey, AuntMinnie, 2017): https://www.auntminnie.com/industry-n... Archival material (public domain) J. J. Lowe, 'Inventor of the X-Ray Foot-o-Scope' (January 1, 1921). Boot and Shoe Recorder, vol. 78, p. 249 / Internet Archive. Public domain: published in the US in 1921: https://archive.org/details/sim_boot-... Lowe's patent for seeing the fit of footwear by X-ray (Filed 1919, granted 1927). Jacob J. Lowe, US Patent 1,614,988 / Google Patents. Public domain: US patent (federal government document): https://patents.google.com/patent/US1... 'Here's the proof!': a Foot-O-Scope ad with its price (January 1, 1921). X-Ray Foot-O-Scope Corp. advertisement, Boot and Shoe Recorder / Internet Archive. Public domain: published in the US in 1921: https://archive.org/details/sim_boot-... 'The proof of the pudding': shoe merchants praise the machine (January 1, 1921). X-Ray Foot-O-Scope Corp. advertisement, Boot and Shoe Recorder / Internet Archive. Public domain: published in the US in 1921: https://archive.org/details/sim_boot-... Matthew B. Adrian's 'X-Ray Machine' patent, sheet 1 (Filed 1923, granted 1927). Matthew B. Adrian, US Patent 1,619,962 / Google Patents. Public domain: US patent (federal government document): https://patents.google.com/patent/US1... An Adrian shoe-fitting fluoroscope from a Washington, D.C. shoe store (made about 1938, photographed 2006). National Museum of Health and Medicine, AFIP / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain: work of the US federal government (PD-USGov tag on the Commons file page): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Series: Erased (full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list.... The Hidden Blueprint: the places, disasters and inventions that quietly built the modern world. Except for the credited archival material, all images are illustrations created for this documentary; maps and diagrams are simplified and not to scale. Narration and quotes are produced with synthetic voices. Original music score. #history #didyouknow #documentary