Wetaskiwin District Heritage Museum Centre & City of Wetaskiwin Archives

One of the craziest artifacts in our collection is this shoe fitting fluoroscope from Brody’s Department Store. It is essentially an X-ray machine used to see if the shoes you wanted fit properly. Yes, you read that correctly. It is one of only about 10,000 devices used from the 1930s to the 1950s. The three viewing ports on the top were designed for looking at the fit from different angles. What you would see was a fluorescent image of the bones of the feet and the outline of the shoes. While unplugged the radiation levels are as safe as a radio, today it is illegal to plug it in!