2. Department store foot X-rays
A shoe fluoroscope displayed at the US National Museum of Health and Medicine. [Image from Wikipedia]
The devices were essentially an X-ray for the foot. It was marketed as a scientific method of finding the best shoe size. Originally designed for veterans in WWI who were at risk of developing trench foot, the device slowly started to be used for women and children who were worried about the growth of their feet. Shoe salesman used the device under the false pretense that they were orthopedic experts in order to sell more shoes.
Fluoroscopes were large wooden boxes that had an X-ray tube at the bottom where there was a cutout for someone to insert their foot. Three viewing scopes rested at the top of the box to allow salesmen, children and moms to see the X-ray of the foot. A green outlined hue of the X-ray would appear in the scopes and showed how a foot fit inside of shoe.
By the 1940s, there was at least 10,000 fluoroscopes in shoe stores across the U.S. Because it was more of a sales gimmick, the devices didn’t really do as they were advertised and exposed anyone within a 10-foot radius of the device to unhealthy doses of radiation. This was about the time that scientists and regulators started to raise concerns about the device and the dangerous levels of radiation being emitted. For the next 20 years, states started to ban or make their own regulations regarding the devices before the FDA stepped in.
In the 1970s, microwaves and televisions started to cause an uproar because of the radiation that could be emitted from them. In 1971, the FDA started to regulate radiation-emitting devices.
