2 ms·

I 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 aw

I 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 ago
My 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 ago
  I 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/

schoen 6y ago

My 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 ago
I 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/