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Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

I'm 49 and I'm sure I remember there still being machines in stores when I was 7 or 8. Is that possible? I don't recall them actually in use - but they were visibly present.

(I'm in the UK)

EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope#Regul...

Looks possible.

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I wonder if you and/or others might be confusing the x-ray machines with the mechanical foot measuring machines.

I'm middle aged and remember Clarks (probably in Sheffield, UK) having what looked like a crushing machine with steel plates that closed - very gently - on to the feet and gave a read out of size and width. (See image at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32738088#_=_ under "Appropriate measures", left hand machine seems familiar to me).

I remember it being a very strange but pleasant experience and wonder now if it wasn't my first ASMR.

So glad I'm not the only one :) there was something weirdly nice about having your foot in one of those machines. Perhaps it was just the effect of going from a hot, probably somewhat uncomfortable show, to the cold metal and freedom.

Well the ones I saw at that age definitely were the xray type. However they weren't being used when I tried to get measured.

It's possible. I'm older and I remember seeing my foot bones outlined in a very attractive green through one. These machines weren't rare items.

I wasn't old enough to understand the dangers, and of course most parents didn't understand them either.

It was all rather insane and reckless, and only luck rather than judgement kept them from becoming a major public health issue.

There was one in a store we used to visit in the late ‘40s. It wasn’t a shoe store - more of a small department store.

I’d stand on the thing, stick the fronts of my shoes into the two holes, lean over and look through the viewport (which was rather like an old stereopticon), push the button and wiggle my green toes.

The clerks never bothered me. I think I knew enough to keep the time short. I don’t remember if it had a timeout - it probably did.

An older relative’s oncologist told him these machines were probably behind an increase in thyroid cancers of kids from the 50s.

Hard to prove the causation decades later, but that was the working assumption.

I'm glad you asked as I'm only a few years younger than you and I have a distinct memory of these too - perhaps in Clarks stores? Must've been, for me anyway, up until around 1985, but that seems so late given how long at that point they'd been deemed dangerous?

My father is approximately 60 and has told me about messing with these things as a kid in Edinburgh.

I am approximately 60 and as a child, I used one of these in south clerk st, Edinburgh when I bought shoes.

I am not your father.

My sister was x-rayed in the UK circa 1987, something to do with her feet being wider than the norm.

Same age, also UK, and yeah, they were still doing those when I was at school - definitely had at least one, vague memories of two.

Yes I also recall seeing them in Clarks but unused

I remember seeing and using the one from 1996 in my early childhood as displayed in this article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32738088#_=_

Not sure if these actually used X-rays but it'd be interesting to find out if they did.

EDIT: In hindsight, I really don't think the type I remember used X-rays.

ANOTHER EDIT: Looks like this is the company that made the ones I can remember: http://sensatech.com/applications/index.html

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