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Between the 1930s and 1970s, with the first feeling of true fall in the air, it meant it was time to go back-to-school shoe shopping. Moms took their sons to the shoe store and helped them pick out a pair of solid leather oxfords for school every day and money allowed a pair for dress-up occasions. For girls, that sometimes meant a pair of black patient leather shoes with crossover straps, like Mary-Jane’s.
A common and prominent shoe store fixture was a fluoroscope machine; he considered himself a shoe salesman’s best friend, particularly in specialty children’s shoe stores like Buster Brown, Paul Parrot, and Red Goose. The fluoroscope machine was state of the art and complemented the usual shoe fitting methods. They were also known as “X-ray shoe fits”.
A typical fluoroscope machine was an upright brown wooden cabinet with an opening near the bottom into which our feet were placed. There was a button on top with an automatic timer that gave about twenty seconds of back-illuminated X-rays of the feet. The X-rays traveled up through the feet to glass screens lit with fluorescent green or yellow.
When the children looked through one of the three viewing ports on top of the cabinet—one for the child being adjusted, one for the child’s parents, and the third for the shoe salesman—they would see 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 it fun for the boys and girls to visit the shoe store. At the same time, it provided an image of the bones and soft tissues of the foot inside a shoe, purportedly increasing the accuracy of the shoe’s fit, and by doing so, improving shoe sales.
Back then it was thought that the shoe fitting fluoroscope allowed salespeople to fit shoes better, providing the best fit possible so shoes would last longer, which meant parents didn’t have to buy as many pairs. Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were installed in shoe stores from the 1930s to the 1970s and then disappeared.
The shoe fluoroscope machine was a non-medical x-ray, and as people began to learn more about the dangers of radiation, their reaction to the use of shoe fluoroscopes changed from initial enthusiasm and confidence to suspicion and the fear. In the 1960s and 1970s, the shoe-fitting fluoroscope was fading, as was the formality of shoe shopping. Baby Boomer parents began choosing self-service over full-service shoe shopping and, to save money, increasingly stopped having a shoe vendor available.
Shoe styles were also changing; More kids began wearing sneakers instead of leather oxfords to school and play, but in the early 20th century, “X-ray shoehorns” made buying back-to-school shoes out of the question. as much fun as buying a balloon today.
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