Everyone has experienced this problem:  You go to buy shoes.  But how can you be sure that those shoes will fit?  That squishing your toe thing is so barbaric.  Wouldn’t it be great if there were a high tech way to check shoes for proper fit?

Why yes, kids and kiddies, you need a Shoe Fitting Fluoroscope!

The Fluoroscope, common in shoe stores from the 1920s – 1950s, used x-rays to project an image of the foot, inside the shoe, onto a screen.

The three viewfinders were for the shoe salesman, mom, and the kid getting the shoes.  The kid put his foot into the slot below, and was basically standing on an x-ray tube.

X-Rays of feet! How high-tech!

Now, even the most casual observer of history and science can finish this story.  Yep.  Cancer in shoe salesmen, deformities, birth defects, sterilization.

But a small price to pay for a proper fit, I say!

Toward the end of the 1940′s US states started adopting laws regulating the machines and the radiation they could output.  By 1960 they were pretty much banned everywhere.

Source: History Channel, here.