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When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

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Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#101

Post by schoen »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #98

I found one of these units at an antique store in Maine, sadly the x-ray tube had been removed. Really nice cabinetry though and I thought this would make an awesome steampunk type accent to a workspace at some point. And while this particular idea had its flaws, the idea of looking at a foot inside a shoe is fundamentally a good one in my opinion. Feet are pretty variable between people and the difference between ha…

My dentist has been telling me that digital x-rays have a dramatically lower dose than the old film kind (which I used to get as a child). I don't know how much lower is dramatically lower, but I think it might be orders of magnitude.

Maybe for what you want to see on the shoes you could use an even lower dose than the new dental x-rays. I mean, these old shoe store x-rays were trying to make the image directly visible to human eyes with a fluoroscope or something, right? Isn't that going to be orders of magnitude more radiation than modern sensors that aren't using the energy from the x-ray radiation to actually render the image?

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#102

Post by jononor »

at_a_remove wrote: post #39

Stephen King's It features one of these machines, in the 1958 part. It's a shame, really. I was thinking about these machines recently as I was trying to come up with a method to drill through a soft and opaque material -- how would you know you were properly centered? Gosh, one of these would be handy.

Unsure what material you need to drill. But for some soft materials the solution can be quite simple - freeze it to make it hard!

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#103

Post by bigbubba »

kube-system wrote: post #97
bigbubba wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I think this is [part of] the answer, not the cost of radiologists.

The radiologic technician's (aka radiographer) labor would also be part of the cost of the imaging. I suppose this is probably the job title the above comment was looking for.

A quick web search leads me to believe this is a minor expense. Either way, I expect the true cost of imaging, including the labor of the technician, is miraculous cheaper in developed countries other than America.

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#104

Post by dmurray »

schoen wrote: post #101
ChuckMcM wrote: post #98

I found one of these units at an antique store in Maine, sadly the x-ray tube had been removed. Really nice cabinetry though and I thought this would make an awesome steampunk type accent to a workspace at some point. And while this particular idea had its flaws, the idea of looking at a foot inside a shoe is fundamentally a good one in my opinion. Feet are pretty variable between people and the difference between ha…

My dentist has been telling me that digital x-rays have a dramatically lower dose than the old film kind (which I used to get as a child). I don't know how much lower is dramatically lower, but I think it might be orders of magnitude. Maybe for what you want to see on the shoes you could use an even lower dose than the new dental x-rays. I mean, these old shoe store x-rays were trying to make the image directly visib…

I think you're right. According to [0], and why would you need any other source for such things, a modern chest X-ray is about 20 µSv. Your two feet combined are smaller than your chest, and in a safer place for radiation, but let's call it the same conservatively.

From the same source, a 4,000-km cross-country flight is 40 µSv. We allow airline workers and other business travellers to rack up a couple of hundred of those a year without worrying too much, so it should be safe to try on at least dozens of pairs of shoes per year.

In practice, we'd surely demand too much regulatory burden for this tech to ever make it back to shoe stores. If shoe salesmen have to be as qualified, regulated and insured as radiologists, it would be cheaper to make custom shoes.

[0] https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#105

Post by TrinaryWorksToo »

tobias2014 wrote: post #79

And after getting a new pair of shoes, you brush your teeth with radioactive toothpaste! "Its radioactive radiation increases the defenses of teeth and gums. The cells are loaded with new life energy, the bacteria are hindered in their destroying effect. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doramad_Radioactive_Toothpaste https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/toothpaste.ht...

Kills the bacteria and the patient too!

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#106

Post by AngryData »

benesch wrote: post #42
rootusrootus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had foot problems for a while, and I went to a podiatrist who suggested I wear crocs. Said that shoes were a modern creation and that our feet weren't designed to need them. It was an unmitigated disaster. So I went to a different podiatrist. She said "let me guess, you went to Dr. So-and-so?" and I replied yes, she said "Yeah, I don't agree with him. Shoes are modern, but so are floors." My feet are much happie…

I’ve never understood the argument that floors and pavement are the cause of modern foot problems due to their hardness. It just doesn’t add up. Sure, running barefoot through a well-maintained soccer field is going to be lower impact than running on pavement. But ancient humans didn’t evolve on soccer fields. If you ever try running through unmaintained land barefoot, it’s terrible on your feet! Uneven terrain, bran…

I think the biggest problem is people running with a heel-first contact to the ground because thick shoes make that feel comfortable and effortless despite the human foot and legs never having evolved to take such hard impacts. Take off someone's shoes and tell them to run on any surface and 9/10 will automatically start running on their toes to reduce foot and leg impact. Heel striking bare foot is not pleasant. The only problem is if someone never runs on their toes and suddenly do run on their toes because they get told it is better, they will quickly tire their feet and calves out and assume the person was full of shit because they ran far longer and easier heel striking because that is what they are use to and built up endurance to do.

You can often tell if someone exclusively heel strikes and doesn't stand or walk or run on their toes at all because they will have super thin calves. You can see it in some people in how they place their foot on bike pedals too, toe runners pedal with their toes, exclusive heel strikers pedal much closer to their heel.

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#107

Post by fennecfoxen »

Causality1 wrote: post #89
gxqoz wrote: post #75

A related phenomenon was x-ray salons, "the most scientific way to remove hair." Hundreds of these cropped up in the early 20th century, originally growing out of their use in the medical profession. Most targeted working class, immigrant women to the US. They were eventually banned but persisted underground for quite some time. There's a good history of them in Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. https://books.googl…

Those machines were terrible but you have to be a little wistful for the days when the American public actually liked science and liked products associated with it.

You do need to understand that there was a point in history when Science™ and Progress™ turned into the things that brought us world wars and atomic bombs.

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#108

Post by kube-system »

bigbubba wrote: post #103
kube-system wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The radiologic technician's (aka radiographer) labor would also be part of the cost of the imaging. I suppose this is probably the job title the above comment was looking for.

A quick web search leads me to believe this is a minor expense. Either way, I expect the true cost of imaging, including the labor of the technician, is miraculous cheaper in developed countries other than America.

Sure, but that's an entirely different comparison than what was being discussed above.

All developed countries share the aforementioned facility, personnel, regulatory, and equipment costs that differentiate modern medicine from mid-20th-century shoe stores.

Even developing countries perform medical imaging to higher standards than the circumstances detailed in the article.

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#109

Post by RC_ITR »

kube-system wrote: post #86
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mm waves are lower energy than visible light, which is far lower energy than x-rays. Or perhaps you weren't implying that mm waves are ionizing and cause cancer?

Cancer via ionization is not the only damage that can be imparted on to human cells. It is quite plausible that we will discover new things that are dangerous in the future (to varying degrees), as we once did with x-rays.

Yeah, but we knew X-Rays were dangerous even then. We just thought it was ok in small doses (scientists were regularly burning themselves with X-Rays in the 19th century even).

Correct me if I’m wrong, but mainstream science doesn’t really follow the same pattern of “bad for you but ok on small doses” (historically the most dangerous viewpoint to have) for mm-waves.

Re: When X-Rays were used at the Shoe Store

#110

Post by smaddox »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #107
Causality1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those machines were terrible but you have to be a little wistful for the days when the American public actually liked science and liked products associated with it.

You do need to understand that there was a point in history when Science™ and Progress™ turned into the things that brought us world wars and atomic bombs.

Atomic bombs, yes. World wars... I guess you could make that argument, but it's a stretch. There were basically world wars in antiquity.

Atomic bombs also pretty much put an end to world wars.

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