Nostalgia thread: Anybody remember 'Pedoscopes' used in shoe stores?

[trof]

I remember using these.
Wonder why I don't have foot cancer?



"Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, also Pedoscopes, were X-ray fluoroscope machines installed in shoe stores from the 1920s until about the 1960s in the United States (by which time they were prohibited), and into the mid-1970s in the United Kingdom.

A fluoroscope was a metal construction covered in timber approximately 4 feet (1.2 m) high in the shape of short column, with a ledge with an opening where the child (or the adult customer) would then place his or her feet in the opening provided and while remaining in a standing position, look through a viewing porthole at the top of the fluoroscope down at the x-ray view of the feet and shoes. Two other viewing portholes on either side enabled the parent and a sales assistant to observe the child's toes being wiggled to show how much room for the toes there was inside the shoe. The bones of the feet were clearly visible, as was the outline of the shoe, including the stitching around the edges. The exposure time would have been around 15 seconds.

Exposure from typical machines ranged from 12 to 107 R per minute (0.1 to 1 Gy per minute).
At the peak of the device's popularity in the early 1950s, about 10,000 machines were in use. In 1949, the danger of the fluoroscope was revealed and the machines in the United States were quietly phased out during the 1950s."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope