When Shoes Were Fit with X-Rays
daily.jstor.org
daily.jstor.org
I've tried to find a video of this but alas, no luck. The one I remember seeing was extremely primitive, safety was basically non-existent, both for the woman being screened (and her unborn child, quite possibly to be aborted anyway if detected) and the operator of the device.
I wonder how many things we do today will be seen in a similar way 50 years from now. If you believe everything you read somewhere online, then pretty much anything today is poisonous and will kill us, but just statistically some of these have to be right.
Amongst the tools in our armoury here is 'kill or cure' [0], whose mission is "Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it"
"When people moved around by getting in single-passenger human-piloted vehicles powered by burning fossil fuels and venting the exhaust directly into the atmosphere."
That one's pretty easy to identify now because it's far enough along we're at the tipping point where it's no longer crazy to talk about replacements. There's a dozen others you see every day which aren't close to that tipping point, and I'd be called crazy just for mentioning them in this category.
1. We're pretty careless with VOCs and other chemicals (e.g. off-gassing new furniture in enclosed environments, or from heated teflon). Folks should open windows more often, plus it's a shame it's not more widely known how easy it is to get exposed to this.
2. There are flame retardant chemicals in just about all soft furniture in the US, which end up as dust particles and end up ingested/inhaled.
3. Phthalates in everything.
4. Glyphosate showing up in large quantities in food, particularly kids' cereal.
Which begs the philosophical question, if we continue on the trend of trying to reduce risk and take that to its extreme conclusion, what is really left of life? People do tons of things every day that put them at risk of an early death --- many of them even enjoy it.
I ride a motorcycle, and I am fully aware of the dangers involved. I also know that going the speed limit, wearing a helmet, and not drinking anything will significantly reduce my risk of death, but that it's still more dangerous than driving a car.
At the same time, I know that breathing in sawdust, paint fumes, and many other things is dangerous for me, so I have a mask that I wear when doing work around my house, and I ensure that there is good ventilation. The "cost" of doing those things is small compared to the possible benefits, so I do them. And without the information that those things are dangerous, I would be putting my wellbeing at risk for no good reason.
Someone in fifty years could easily say "Can you believe they used to allow stores where you'd pay to go into a pod and purposely be given skin cancer?!"
Others that I won’t be surprised if it bites us are Nitrates in food, Aspartame, Vaping, red meat, refined carbs.
In other words, we haven’t proven that there isn’t a risk, and it’s worth doing more research to try and discover if there is a risk because it would be a pretty big deal if there is...but it’s not an easy thing to control for.
I don’t think we’ll have an answer to this during this century, unless it conclusively _does_ cause harm (current studies indicate that it does not).
That said, I'm not saying they are carcinogenic, but I'd rather err on the side of caution. Short answer, I don't hold the phone near my head, I leave it out of my jeans pocket as much as possible, and have it on flight mode at night.
Given the recent news about there being small bits of asbestos mixed in, one has to wonder if that was the actual reason for it being on the list.
A lot of late 19/early 20th century equipment is like that. Wood was a common material and ornate design was simply a way to show off craftsmanship.
But there's no real need to see the bones for fitting shoes. There's plenty of 3D scanning technologies today that do not involve ionizing radiation and would probably be more useful for fitting shoes anyway.
Having x-ray images or such would actually be somewhat helpful, as you could much more easily identify the metatarsophalangeal joints (the joint where the toe meets the foot), the locations of which do influence shoe fit to some extent.
However, the cost, safety, usability etc. of using x-ray machines in a retail setting makes it infeasible by a wide margin compared to optical measurement methods, and those generally take you far enough anyway. I'd rather go for dynamic analysis (i.e. scanning the foot while it is in motion taking a step) if more data on the skeletal structure is required.
This may be mostly irrelevant though because unless you have problems with your feet you can tell if shoes fit simply by the feel.
Perhaps most obviously, you just can't try a shoe on if you buy online. You can if you buy five pairs and return four, as some do, but it's a lot of hassle and a waste of resources for all the shipping back and forth.
Secondly, a significant portion of the population (tens of precent) have "problems" enough that most shoes in a store don't fit, meaning you have to try on a lot before you find one that does. And even if you don't have such issues, sizing between brands (and even styles) is so inconsistent that you usually have to try multiple different sizes to decide which one fits you. Having a 3D model paired with an AI system that tells you which shoes fit and what sizes to pick saves a lot of time for a lot of people, both shoppers and staff.
Finally, if you ever want to order custom made footwear, there is really no way around measuring your feet. And arguably the only reliably well-defined and repeatable way of doing that is to do a 3D scan to capture the shape.
Knitted socks are quite a lot more forgiving than leather shoes, fortunately, since the material accommodates by stretching when you put it on. I'm not surprised it worked well for you and your aunt!
I have the impression that this is half the battle with finding shoes myself. Probably the bones are the same size left and right, but I think they deform differently as I stand (or walk) in a way that depends on the contours of the shoe... and that sounds like a problem that would be hard to model with laser scanning or whatever.
I think it's more likely that it's the deformation of the shoe that is uneven than that the shoe affects the deformation of the foot much. An exception would be if it has a built-up sole with support for the arches, preventing the arches from collapsing.
Either way, it's a complex process that is hard to model, just like you say. The way we're getting around it is by collecting various data on what people end up liking and then infer the properties of the shoe, rather than trying to explicitly model it. So the solution is a combination of 3D scanning and machine learning.
Also worth mentioning, by the way: most people actually have slightly different size and shape on their left vs. right foot. For about 50% of the population the length differs by more than half a US size. Being perfectly symmetrical is the rare case.
As someone with hard to fit feet, I have often wished for custom footwear made with modern materials and design. I envision a system where you go to the store, they create a 3d model, you pick a design, and it is sent off to a factory that has been tooled to efficiently build the footwear from the model.
I think you could charge 150 or even 200% over off-the-shelf versions for modern custom fit running shoes/hiking boots/ski boots, etc. These markets already spend extra money for premium products. I know I would pay it, gladly.
Runners seem to go through shoes like clockwork. You could setup a subscription service.
Randall Munroe's radiation dose chart (https://xkcd.com/radiation/) says that a cross-country flight delivers a higher dose than a typical dental x-ray or even a chest x-ray. Maybe it would already be worth it with really modern imaging equipment.
The X-ray image can't possibly tell you things like that the shoe's upper is too tight over the metatarsals, or that a seam inside the shoe is rubbing on your pinky toe, which will cause blistering.
At the end of the day, a good shoe fit is a simple matter of feel.
What I’d really like though is a machine that can construct a good shoe specifically for your foot in a reasonable amount of time. Even if it took a week, I might be willing to wait for that for custom fit shoes (as I do for new glasses for example).
Generally I could build this machine and would really like to, but I haven’t found a good idea on materials. If you could make them from recycled bottles and natural fibers it would be interesting too. Or maybe a totally woven shoe? Does anyone have any YouTube links or similar on unique ways to make shoes that could be done in a machine of some limited cost and complexity?
Disclosure: I work for a technology provider in this field.
So it’s a different approach. Basically I’m starting to make better and better robots with my 3D printers and I want to make open source factories with the tech. :)
I can't see cost being an issue - when you look at how shoe construction works, it should be straightforward to tweak the shoe shape for each shoe without significant increase in manufacturing cost.
I'd expect it to take a number of years before the manufacturing processes have matured and evolved enough to get the price points down to the level that most people would consider an option when buying footwear, though.