Between the 30s and 70s, with the first feeling of true fall in the air, it meant it was time to go shoe shopping to go back to school. Mom took her kids to the shoe store and helped them pick out a pair of solid leather oxford shoes for school every day and the money allowed for a pair for costume occasions. For girls, that sometimes meant a pair of cross-strap black leather patient shoes, like Mary-Jane’s.
A common and prominent accessory in a shoe store was a fluoroscopic machine; he considered himself the best friend of a shoe salesman, particularly at specialty children’s shoe stores such as Buster Brown, Paul Parrot, and Red Goose. The fluoroscopic machine was state-of-the-art technology and complemented the usual shoe fitting methods, also known as “X-ray shoemakers”.
A typical fluoroscopic machine was a vertical brown wooden cabinet with an opening near the bottom into which the feet were placed. There was a button at the top with an automatic timer that provided about twenty seconds of X-ray backlight of the feet. X-rays traveled up through the feet to glass screens illuminated with fluorescent green or yellow.
When the children looked through one of the three viewing ports on the top of the cabinet, one for the child who was positioning himself, one for the child’s father, and the third for the shoe salesman, they saw a greenish fluorescent image. of the child’s bones. feet and the outline of the shoes.
The fluoroscope X-ray view of their feet made the boys and girls visit the shoe store in a fun way. At the same time, it provided an image of the bones and soft tissues of the foot within a shoe, allegedly increasing the precision of the shoe’s fit and thereby improving shoe sales.
Back then it was thought that the shoe fitting fluoroscope allowed sellers to better fit shoes, giving the best possible fit for longer lasting shoes, which meant that parents did not have to buy as many pairs. Shoe fluoroscopes were installed in shoe stores from the 1930s to the 1970s, then disappeared.
The shoe-wearing fluoroscope machine was a non-medical X-ray, and as people began to learn more about the dangers of radiation, their reaction to using shoe-wearing fluoroscopes changed from initial enthusiasm and confidence to suspicion. and fear. In the 1960s and 1970s, the shoe-fitting fluoroscope was fading, as was the formality of shoe shopping. Baby Boomer’s parents began to choose self-service over shopping for full-service shoes and to save money increasingly discontinued the availability of a shoe-fitting vendor.
Shoe styles were also changing; more kids started wearing sneakers instead of leather oxford shoes for school and play, but in the early 20th century, “X-ray shoe adjusters” put so much fun into shopping for back-to-school shoes how to buy a balloon today.
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