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When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store
- shotta 6y agoShoe-fitting fluoroscope... there’s a massive shoe store near where I grew up that still has at least one (not operational). Very cool antique.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThe old shoe store in my small town had one in the corner. My Dad asked about it. The clerk said it was dangerous and didn't want to use it. We kids were disappointed. That was post WWII, so I don't know how long it'd been there. The fluoroscope I mean; the shoe store had been there for decades.
- elric 6y agoTangent. People are still getting conned when it comes to shoes. Custom designed soles, with padding in the "right" places based on the shape of your foot, in order to "absorb impact" or "correct overpronation". Which is nonsense and unnecessary unless you have foot deformities. Your foot is perfectly capable of absorbing impact and whatnot. This is all marketing aimed at gullible new runners who want to go from couch to marathon without taking the time to learn proper running technique and without giving their bodies time to adapt to running. All the while ingraining and reinforcing bad running habits. But at least we're no longer xraying people's feet for no apparent reason, so that's a start.
- eganist 6y agoI'd be interested in reading deeper. Do you have references countering the marketing claims?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thesumofall 6y agoOne of the best resources in the net. It won’t give clear cut answers but plenty of good starters to make up your own mind: https://fellrnr.com/wiki/The_Science_of_Running_Shoes https://fellrnr.com/wiki/The_Science_of_Running_Shoes
- cbanek 6y agoI don't remember where I saw this, but I thought I saw a display that you could step on and it would try to convince you to buy custom designed insoles? It used some kind of pressure sensor that would map your foot or something. I feel like shoes are kind of like mattresses are marketed the same way - mostly talking about pressure points, that and memory foam.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 3JPLW 6y agoThe proper shoe shouldn't reinforce bad running habits. If you got pushed that way by a one-on-one shoe fitting, you certainly did get "conned." As someone who has had only one professional running shoe fitting in my life, I found it invaluable. They were able to immediately identify where my stride was going wrong. They advised me not just on the shoe, but on improving my gait. I bought one full-price shoe once, then was able to buy similar shoes on sale/clearance. Following the fitting (and guidance), I've not had the same knee pain since. YMMV, but it's not all cons. It's a middle-ground between nothing and a full-fledged sports therapy.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoExactly. People ran barefoot, then with a thin piece of leather strapped to their feet for hundreds of thousands of years. All this arch and ankle support of the last few decades has done nothing except cause injuries.
- dantillberg 6y agoWhat about all the concrete and asphalt we run on now? Doesn't that make a difference?
- citiguy 6y agoHarder surfaces are actually easier to run on than dirt trails. You get much more of the energy you put down with each footfall back. This is important because your foot is basically a spring and designed to recover some of the energy put into making each step.
- i_am_andy 6y agoHarder surfaces are a mixed bag. Yes you run faster but your feet, ankles and knees take more impact and damage.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoNot if you strike with your forefoot. If you are landing on your heels, then yes. Don’t do that.
- foobiekr 6y agoHuman bipedalism evolved in places like the East African Rift Valley which is rocky, hard packed ground and not at all the soft grasses people imagine. If you've ever hiked in Pennsylvania, it's a bit like that.
- nkrisc 6y agoAnd people also only lived to be 40 (if they were lucky) for hundreds of thousands of years. Just because ancient people did something doesn't somehow make it better for that reason alone.
- rootusrootus 6y agoI've had foot problems for a while, and I went to a podiatrist who suggested I wear crocs. Said that shoes were a modern creation and that our feet weren't designed to need them. It was an unmitigated disaster. So I went to a different podiatrist. She said "let me guess, you went to Dr. So-and-so?" and I replied yes, she said "Yeah, I don't agree with him. Shoes are modern, but so are floors." My feet are much happier now. Properly designed insoles make pretty much any shoe comfortable for me (notably, the insoles aren't really padded, they're pretty hard). Walking around on hardwood floors barefoot makes my feet hurt.
- HeWhoLurksLate 6y agoI put running insoles in a pair of really cheap steel-toes that I have to wear at work, and it made all the difference in how my legs and feet felt at the end of a shift.
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoSimilar to an old trick for gastro workers. Take two pairs to work and swap them half way. Your feet will feel a lot better at the end of the day.
- Scoundreller 6y agoGastro workers = restaurant staff?
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoYep
- benesch 6y agoI’ve never understood the argument that floors and pavement are the cause of modern foot problems due to their hardness. It just doesn’t add up. Sure, running barefoot through a well-maintained soccer field is going to be lower impact than running on pavement. But ancient humans didn’t evolve on soccer fields. If you ever try running through unmaintained land barefoot, it’s terrible on your feet! Uneven terrain, branches and rocks everywhere... you wind up putting a ton of stress on your feet, far more than you do walking around a house barefoot. I think it’s far more likely that a) modern life causes children not to develop strong feet from an early age, or b) that evolutionary pressures for well-functioning feet have disappeared. In any case, I’m glad the insoles solved your problems. I just wish the field of podiatry did a better job of root cause analysis.
- fiftyacorn 6y agoI've stuck with one type of running shoe all the way thru running. I just get the new version each time, and when I have changed style or brand I've got injured
- blevin 6y agoA good pod episode on this: https://peterattiamd.com/irenedavis/ https://peterattiamd.com/irenedavis/
- foobiekr 6y agoI agree with this. Due to youthful stupidity I've probably had at least a dozen severe sprains and so I am now very prone to them (rolling an ankle at least once a year until I made a change). I switched to five fingers, which I acknowledge are full of hype and woo on the marketing side, and have never rolled an ankle since. It's been 13 years or so..
- k__ 6y agoAn older friend of mine told me the times were surreal. Doctors would casualy xray you for many minutes even when you got minor symptoms. Then suddendly xray was considered harmful and you would only get on static image when you had serious problems.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- teleforce 6y agoNow we know how Dijkstra's paper editor come out with the infamous phrase "considered harmful" :-)
- andybak 6y agoI'm 49 and I'm sure I remember there still being machines in stores when I was 7 or 8. Is that possible? I don't recall them actually in use - but they were visibly present. (I'm in the UK) EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope#Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope#Regul... Looks possible.
- flarg 6y agoYes I also recall seeing them in Clarks but unused
- snalty 6y agoI remember seeing and using the one from 1996 in my early childhood as displayed in this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32738088#_=_ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32738088#_=_ Not sure if these actually used X-rays but it'd be interesting to find out if they did. EDIT: In hindsight, I really don't think the type I remember used X-rays. ANOTHER EDIT: Looks like this is the company that made the ones I can remember: http://sensatech.com/applications/index.html http://sensatech.com/applications/index.html
- wrycoder 6y agoThere was one in a store we used to visit in the late ‘40s. It wasn’t a shoe store - more of a small department store. I’d stand on the thing, stick the fronts of my shoes into the two holes, lean over and look through the viewport (which was rather like an old stereopticon), push the button and wiggle my green toes. The clerks never bothered me. I think I knew enough to keep the time short. I don’t remember if it had a timeout - it probably did.
- Digory 6y agoAn older relative’s oncologist told him these machines were probably behind an increase in thyroid cancers of kids from the 50s. Hard to prove the causation decades later, but that was the working assumption.
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- amelius 6y agoSo what could we use as a solution nowadays? UWB radar? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-wideband https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-wideband
- alricb 6y agoA Brannock device? (essentially calipers for feet) https://brannock.com/ https://brannock.com/
- opwieurposiu 6y agoMy daughter has a pair of toddler shoes with a window in the sole so you can see where the toes are. It works, but I am not convinced it is necessary. You can tell pretty quick if the shoes do not fit by watching the kid try to walk. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/76/0f/ac/760fac925593ed258c9381f9acbbbc04.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/76/0f/ac/760fac925593ed258c93...
- rob74 6y agoInteresting and also scary - I guess it was ok for customers, but the employees using the machines would probably over time get a serious amount of radiation literally in their face (from what it looks like)? If you think that nowadays while making X-rays the medical personnel will either wear lead-lined aprons or leave the room altogether...
- 3JPLW 6y agoEspecially given this: > That 1948 study of 43 machines in Detroit showed ranges from 16 to 75 roentgens per minute. In 1946, the American Standards Association had issued a safety code for industrial use of X-rays, limiting exposure to 0.1 R per day. I'd be curious how much a typical modern dental x-ray emits, but we no longer measure in roentgens these days as we have better measures of the actual dose (sieverts).
- quickthrowman 6y agoRadiation from x-rays is measured in microsieverts, or less than a single day’s exposure to background radiation https://www.iaea.org/resources/rpop/health-professionals/dentistry/radiation-doses https://www.iaea.org/resources/rpop/health-professionals/den...
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoModern dental x-rays are basically negligible for most patients, although not for dentists who do them daily, even though they're well away from the beam - which is why they have to hide when they take them. Less negligible are CT scans, which can expose you to multiples of the average annual background dose in a few minutes. That's still relatively low level exposure. But there isn't really a safe minimum exposure level, and it's certainly not something you'd want to have regularly.
- copperx 6y agoAren't CT scans equivalent to about 3,000 chest X-Rays? It sounds pretty bad if you're young.
- mrfusion 6y agoSay, why can’t we recreate this with ultrasound? Actually that seems like a good idea. Should I patent it?
- skj 6y agoWould require taking your shoes and socks off, smothering them in sonic gel, and having someone who knows how operate the wand.
- mrfusion 6y agoI’m not sure about that. I’d imagine for a general outline of the foot with little need for detail it might be fine.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- poisonarena 6y agosome people would pay to work a job like that
- gwbas1c 6y agoNow you can't, because someone will use your post to invalidate it as prior art!
- mrfusion 6y agoOops
- mordechai9000 6y agoI think you could build a 3d model with photogrammetry. There's not that much soft tissue and it's not like you're going to ignore it, anyway. Retool the manufacturing so custom shoes roll off the line with modern materials and design. I'd pay a premium for hiking boots custom made for my feet, and I bet a lot of other people would, too. Or any athletic footwear. People are already paying whatever they can afford. Of course you can get custom hiking boots handmade, but when I looked into it, the materials and design were ancient and the resulting boots were ridiculously heavy.
- at_a_remove 6y agoStephen King's It features one of these machines, in the 1958 part. It's a shame, really. I was thinking about these machines recently as I was trying to come up with a method to drill through a soft and opaque material -- how would you know you were properly centered? Gosh, one of these would be handy.
- jononor 6y agoUnsure what material you need to drill. But for some soft materials the solution can be quite simple - freeze it to make it hard!
- GnarfGnarf 6y agoI remember having my shoe fit checked in the 50's by one of these machines, at Morgan's department store in Montreal.
- cjm42 6y agoThere was an episode of American Restoration that featured a machine like this. They restored it (minus the X-ray part) with a stock X-ray picture so it would look like it still worked. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2348752/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2348752/
- phkahler 6y agoNext time you need an X-ray ask the doctor why that costs more than a pair of shoes. I mean they used to include one free with a pair.
- knodi123 6y agobecause the shoe salesman isn't a trained radiologist.
- bigbubba 6y agoAren't the two distinguished in the billing? And AFAIK you can get 'just an xray' from one provider then contract another radiologist for the analysis.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 6y agoNo one expected him to be one at the time, we didn't know the dangers. It's like asking why removing Asbestos costs so much when my grandfather put this building together earning a nickel a day.
- bigbubba 6y agoI'm not talking about expectations. I am talking about the price of medical imaging, not the price of the analysis of medical imaging. It is my impression that a clear distinction between these matters can and frequently is made.
- kube-system 6y agoThe price of being imaged with one of these: https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MzcwNzM3OQ.jpeg https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MzcwNzM3OQ.jpeg Was cheaper than being imaged today with one of these: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Xraymachine.JPG/800px-Xraymachine.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Xr... Because the first one was a hack put together before we knew how bad it was. The second one is a high quality unit, with high safety standards, and regulatory compliance. The first one has none of those features. You may as well ask yourself why a 737 costs more than the Wright Flyer.
- simonh 6y agoMichael Caine (as Harry Palmer) using a shoe shop X-Ray machine to examine a suspicious package. It's at the end of this clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPlOsrT0raQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPlOsrT0raQ
- hammock 6y ago"When mm waves were used at the airport (2044)"
- BenjiWiebe 6y agomm waves are lower energy than visible light, which is far lower energy than x-rays. Or perhaps you weren't implying that mm waves are ionizing and cause cancer?
- kube-system 6y agoCancer via ionization is not the only damage that can be imparted on to human cells. It is quite plausible that we will discover new things that are dangerous in the future (to varying degrees), as we once did with x-rays.
- RC_ITR 6y agoYeah, but we knew X-Rays were dangerous even then. We just thought it was ok in small doses (scientists were regularly burning themselves with X-Rays in the 19th century even). Correct me if I’m wrong, but mainstream science doesn’t really follow the same pattern of “bad for you but ok on small doses” (historically the most dangerous viewpoint to have) for mm-waves.
- heisenzombie 6y agoWell, you could definitely burn yourself with a powerful mm wave generator; but I'm not sure if that really says anything about safety.
- RC_ITR 6y agoSure, it's not a perfect metaphor since you can burn yourself with high-energy light too. My point is more that it's a urban myth that we thought X-Rays were harmless in the 50's. We just had a bad understanding of the risk vectors & built a bad risk model.
- anonymousiam 6y agoAs a child, my mother would go to the shoe store and stare into these machines for hours, just for the entertainment value. Later in life, her feet were horribly deformed.
- gxqoz 6y agoA related phenomenon was x-ray salons, "the most scientific way to remove hair." Hundreds of these cropped up in the early 20th century, originally growing out of their use in the medical profession. Most targeted working class, immigrant women to the US. They were eventually banned but persisted underground for quite some time. There's a good history of them in Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. https://books.google.com/books?id=LZvsCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=plucked&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiHlLfP-ObsAhWzOH0KHdiqC5UQ6AEwAXoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=%22x-ray%20salons%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=LZvsCwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...
- Causality1 6y agoThose machines were terrible but you have to be a little wistful for the days when the American public actually liked science and liked products associated with it.
- outworlder 6y agoOne could argue that the disdain for science today could also be related to this kind of thing.
- fennecfoxen 6y agoYou do need to understand that there was a point in history when Science™ and Progress™ turned into the things that brought us world wars and atomic bombs.
- smaddox 6y agoAtomic bombs, yes. World wars... I guess you could make that argument, but it's a stretch. There were basically world wars in antiquity. Atomic bombs also pretty much put an end to world wars.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago> There were basically world wars in antiquity World War I saw the advent of chemical warfare with mustard gas. World War II saw European cities razed by carpet-bombing, even leaving atoms aside.
- yostrovs 6y agoMany doctors stand for hours with their hands under the fluoroscope when working in the cath lab. It's not that dangerous if they're willing to do it.
- tobias2014 6y agoAnd after getting a new pair of shoes, you brush your teeth with radioactive toothpaste! "Its radioactive radiation increases the defenses of teeth and gums. The cells are loaded with new life energy, the bacteria are hindered in their destroying effect. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doramad_Radioactive_Toothpaste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doramad_Radioactive_Toothpaste https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/toothpaste.htm https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/toothpaste.ht...
- TrinaryWorksToo 6y agoKills the bacteria and the patient too!
- MurMan 6y agoI remember these machines well. My father was a radiologist and wouldn't let us use them. He knew they were dangerous and the shoe sales people were unqualified. As a side note, many of his fellow radiologists lost fingers because they didn't follow procedures using shields and lead gloves.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoI found one of these units at an antique store in Maine, sadly the x-ray tube had been removed. Really nice cabinetry though and I thought this would make an awesome steampunk type accent to a workspace at some point. And while this particular idea had its flaws, the idea of looking at a foot inside a shoe is fundamentally a good one in my opinion. Feet are pretty variable between people and the difference between having the right shoe and the wrong shoe is a good differentiator. I didn't appreciate how much until I got a pair of hiking boots (Asolo) that actually fit my particularly shaped foot. My father-in-law had custom shoes made for him on Hong Kong in the 60's and would send them a check when ever he wanted a new pair. So startup idea is to use some sort of nuclear imaging technology that has no negative health effects to enhance shoe fitting and thus sales.
- schoen 6y agoMy dentist has been telling me that digital x-rays have a dramatically lower dose than the old film kind (which I used to get as a child). I don't know how much lower is dramatically lower, but I think it might be orders of magnitude. Maybe for what you want to see on the shoes you could use an even lower dose than the new dental x-rays. I mean, these old shoe store x-rays were trying to make the image directly visible to human eyes with a fluoroscope or something, right? Isn't that going to be orders of magnitude more radiation than modern sensors that aren't using the energy from the x-ray radiation to actually render the image?
- dmurray 6y agoI think you're right. According to [0], and why would you need any other source for such things, a modern chest X-ray is about 20 µSv. Your two feet combined are smaller than your chest, and in a safer place for radiation, but let's call it the same conservatively. From the same source, a 4,000-km cross-country flight is 40 µSv. We allow airline workers and other business travellers to rack up a couple of hundred of those a year without worrying too much, so it should be safe to try on at least dozens of pairs of shoes per year. In practice, we'd surely demand too much regulatory burden for this tech to ever make it back to shoe stores. If shoe salesmen have to be as qualified, regulated and insured as radiologists, it would be cheaper to make custom shoes. [0] https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- technofiend 6y agoThe early 20th century had an odd fascination with all things radioactive. I remember reading a Wall Street Journal article entitled "The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off" [1]. I can't find a WSJ reprint, but there are online copies available by searching the headline or a CNN article mentions it. [2] Apparently Mr. Byers the maker and an avid drinker of the cola had to be buried in a lead-lined coffin. According to The New York Times [3], Mr. Byers' death triggered action from the FDA and brought an end to radioactive patent medicines. From the CNN article: Evans was an expert at measuring and mathematically modeling the human body's uptake and excretion of radioactivity. Based on Byers' self-reported RadiThor consumption, Evans' model had predicted that Byers' body would contain about 100,000 becquerel of radioactivity. ("Becquerel" is an international unit of radioactivity.) What he found was that Byers' skeletal remains actually had a total of 225,000 becquerel, suggesting that either Evans' model of radiation uptake was underestimating radium's affinity for bone, or alternatively, that Byers had actually understated his personal RadiThor consumption by a factor of at least two. It was not possible to determine which alternative accounted for the discrepancy. For the sake of comparison, some water from the Fukushima disaster reads 200,000 becquerel, although different isotopes are involved and exposure limits vary by isotope, Mr. Byers was well beyond a reasonable limit by any measure. [4] [1] http://lateralscience.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-radium-water-worked-fine-until-his.html http://lateralscience.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-radium-water-... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/health/energy-drinks-radioactive/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/health/energy-drinks-radioact... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/1932/04/02/archives/death-stirs-action-on-radium-cures-trade-commission-speeds-its.html https://www.nytimes.com/1932/04/02/archives/death-stirs-acti... [4] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/water-6-700-times-more-radioactive-legal-limit-spills-fukushima-flna8C11328045 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/water-6-700-times-more-ra...
- theophrastus 6y agoMy 89 year old mother loves to tell the story of her brother and friends spending several hours getting whatever body part they could push through the shoe slot below to be reported on how it looks by another child looking through the scope at the top. They were very disappointed that my uncle's head couldn't fit so they could examine his brain, (which they always figured had some bats in it)
- islon 6y agoEvery time I read about such things I imagine what kind of things are we doing now that people 50-100 years from now will comment and laugh about.