Body Scanning Began With Shoe Salesman Back In The Nineteen Forties

[SamW]

Source: WV News

Think Body Scanning Is Dangerous?

The most infamous, yet dangerous sales and marketing pitch of all times was orchestrated in the late 1940’s by corporate interests. And supported by our government.

Can you imagine today, allowing a shoe salesman to x-ray your feet using a fluoroscope when buying a pair of shoes? Of course not! Well, that scam worked for over thirty plus years’ beginning in the 1940’s when manufacturers built and sold approx. 10,000 devices in the US.

Americans trusted the reports that the devices were safe. All the while, they were unknowingly exposed to high doses of radiation.

Now To 2010…. We are going through airport full body scanning….


Read more: http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2010/11/body-scanning-began-with-shoe-salesman.html

[marybourg]

1. But it was fun to watch your toes wiggle. nt.

[Frances]

3. Thanks for the smile

and yes I had my feet X-rayed.

[MineralMan]

2. I remember those foot fluoroscopes.

They had one at the nearby Sears store when I was a kid. We used to love looking at the bones in our feet. Little did we know.

[Orrex]

4. In 1952 I tried to smuggle a box cutter into the shoe department

Lousy fluoroscope caught me red-footed.

[rfranklin]

5. I had to wear those corrective shoes after getting x-rayed....

There I was walking down the sidewalk like Forest Gump. Never could run like him however.

That was another scam of the 1950s, preying on anxious mothers who had a vision of their children growing up as deformed cripples if they didn't purchase an expensive pair of metal braced shoes.

[Abq_Sarah]

10. I too wore those lovely corrective shoes

Shoe technology has come a long way in the last 50 years and better shoes have spared kids today with having to wear those ugly clodhoppers.

[No Elephants]

6. Jaysus. Talk about apples and oranges.

Some folkd were X-Rayed in 1940 after a fall, too. That also has nothing to do with TSA scanning.

[SamW]

9. Same Idea In Mind

Getting an injury x-rayed is one thing, You dont go through a body scanner because your injured!!!

[Historic NY]

7. Wow sucking up rads in the old days...they were good for you.....

:wow: My Chiropractor used to have an x-ray machine in a closet lead lined walls and inspections. I think he got too many rads.

[alfredo]

8. I remember those. I remember seeing the bones in my feet.

I wonder if that was the source of the benign tumors in my feet.

[spin]

11. Damn , I am old ...

I remember having my feet x-rayed with a fluoroscope.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. My dad told me about that.

the point of it was to determine if you had a good fit, or if the toes were too crowded in the shoe. He tried it when he was a kid. And in the sixties, when he was one of the civilians who were allowed to see a nuclear test in Nevada.

[hayu_lol]

13. I think it started before the 40s...

had a lot to do with the fit(growing room)of the leather shoes we all wore to school. We used to wander around the shoe store while mom bought the shoes...were free to use the machine as much as we wanted.

Some shoe stores used to advertise on the radio and in print media that they had such machines in their stores.

That was back in the day when you scuffed the toes of your shoes, then had to have toe taps installed. Wear out your heel unevenly, more taps. Made a wonderful amount of noise at class change time. Shoes were always being repaired in those days rather than being replaced until absolutely necessary.

Being able to check 'room to grow' was appreciated by most mothers as a money saver when cash was tight.

[RushIsRot]

14. But they were doing this to kids to make sure the shoes left some room for growth.

EVERYONE knows kids are indestructible.

[SamW]

15. Original

It actually began as far back as the thirties, and the last machine was located in Madison WV in the 1980's and still be used because the store owner did not know they hyad been outlawed!!