Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, also sold under the names X-ray Shoe Fitter, Pedoscope and Foot-o-scope, were X-ray fluoroscope machines installed in shoe stores from the 1920s until about the 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Germany and Switzerland.^[1] In the UK, they were known as Pedoscopes, after the company based in St. Albans that manufactured them.^[2] An example can be seen at the Science Museum, London.^[3] At the beginning of the 1930s, Bally was the first company to import pedoscopes into Switzerland from the UK.

There are multiple claims for the invention of the shoe-fitting fluoroscope. The most likely is Jacob Lowe, who demonstrated a modified medical device at shoe retailer conventions in 1920 in Boston and in 1921 in Milwaukee. Lowe filed a US patent application in 1919, granted in 1927, and assigned it to the Adrian Company of Milwaukee for US$15,000. Syl Adrian claims that his brother, Matthew Adrian, invented and built the first machine in Milwaukee; his name is featured in a 1922 advertisement for an X-ray shoe fitter. Clarence Karrer, the son of an X-ray equipment distributor, claims to have built the first unit in 1924 in Milwaukee, but had his idea stolen and patented by one of his father’s employees. In the meantime, the British company Pedoscope filed a British patent application in 1924, granted in 1926, and claimed to have been building these machines since 1920.^[4]

The X-ray Shoe Fitter Corporation of Milwaukee and Pedoscope Company became the largest manufacturers of shoe-fitting fluoroscopes in the world.

https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/shoe-fitting-fluoroscope/index.html