Measuring Feet: A Brief History

In this episode, Barbara and Teja dip their toes into the surprisingly strange history of shoe sizing. Did you know that grains of barleycorn were once the standard unit for measuring feet? Shoe sizes were based on cereal math. 

Then there was the mid-century trend of using x-ray machines in shoe stores. It seemed like a way to find your perfect fit. It turned out that prolonged radiation exposure wasn’t the foot-care breakthrough we hoped it would be.

Come for the barleycorn, stay for the vintage tech that really should stay in the past.

Find us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok: @loidunk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Shoes. Oh my god. Shoes.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Do you remember that video? I did. That was like literally one of the first viral videos. One of the first viral videos. Probably still like a classic.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Well, I no, I haven't seen it referred to in a really long time. But we're gonna have to find a find a link for that and put it in the description just because you know it it oh it takes you back. It takes you back.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

When the girls were younger, we played that.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Oh my god, choose.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

And and instead of the B word, it was betch.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Oh right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

And I remember the I remember it was kind of like looking at us like, is that alright?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Is that okay?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Is that okay?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I don't know about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

But then you used to take, you used to take the girls shoe shopping like pretty regularly. Like, what's up with that? Like I was like, oh my god, shoes. And we didn't have a shoe rack in our Genkon, which is a Japanese place where you, when you enter the house, you put your shoes. We have a whole like shelves of shoes.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Yes, I do. Yes. And yours are on the top because you can reach that high.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah. I have like a space where I keep my five shoe pairs of shoes. Four, four or five.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Oh my god. Shoes. But but haven't you ever wondered how shoe sizes come about? Uh don't say no because we've already we're gonna do a whole video on this, so if you say no, we're just kind of have to start over.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Uh maybe. Yes. Yes. Ah no, no, of course I want because they used to have like the the metal things.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Yeah, I think they still have those. Okay. I have them, but they didn't always have those. No.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Well, what did they use before that?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Oh, so many things.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Like what?

unknown 2:01

What?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

All right. Well, so I am on awesome shoes.com.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

And what what they're talking about is first, you know, they didn't really have measurements based on body parts, you know, and thus therefore like the qubit, right? And then a foot was supposed to be a foot, but like if you're building a house and one person says a foot, like is that with a shoe or without a shoe? And is that this person's foot or that person's foot? And what if like the main contractor has one size foot, but the assistant has another size foot? And then they're both building the same house, and they both one starts on the left and one starts on the right, and they're building a foot, and they come into the middle, and next thing you know, you have like a trapezoid.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

What's that got to do with shoes?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Well, because it's how you measure.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Okay. Oh, mean because feet in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Right, right. And well, and and it started out in more places than just the United States as feet.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

And then feet. Apparently, feet, even in ancient times, was often like a thumb. There was like a thumb width, and then, you know, feet.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

So that's how they measured feet, was by the concept of a foot. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

So like distance would be a foot. But the question was, whose foot?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

I I don't know. Whose foot would it be? Probably some king, I'm guessing, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Eventually. Eventually. Good for you. Yeah. Okay. Good for you.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

All right.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So apparently, according to awesome shoes.com, um, King Edward I introduced standards.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Oh. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Um at four foot. But also, um, he defined an inch using barley corn.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

What'd you do?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Oh, I just dropped my ruler.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Wait, he he so you say that is?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

This is barley. Barley.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Barley, okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

And apparently all I hear is beer. Each barley corn.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

This is pearled barley. I don't know if that's the same. It's supposed to be roughly a third of an inch.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

What is?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

A barley corn. Yeah. So then apparently three barley corns was an inch, but I don't think that looks right. Because but this is pearled bar. Oh my goodness. Wait, no, that's a fourth of an inch.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Okay. Well, it's probably I mean, things have gotten smaller over the years. Everything's gotten smaller.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

All technology has gotten smaller. You're right. And this is just technology. So it's true. It's true. Okay, so.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Even rabbits are smaller.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

I mmm. Or at least the ones that have just been born and are eating all of our foliage. Um, so the so the another problem here is that I'm noticing a variation in the size of the barley corns. And again, this is pearled barley.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

This is a variation.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

That's there a difference between a barley corn and pearled barley. Can you how?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Oh, sorry, but uh is there uh was it called barley corn?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

There's barley corn. Barley corn versus versus pearled barley, P-E-A-R-L-E-D.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Barley. Alright, so AI says barley corn ref it's one word. Barley corn refers to the entire barley kernel, while pearled barley is a processed version where the outer hull and bran layer have been removed.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

So a higher glycemic index, I'm supposing, and carbohydrate heavy.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

That I don't know. Well, that would be this would be smaller than a barley corn. So these went out the window. I was gonna be so impressive and show you that that barley was a third of an inch.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Oh, because you're measuring feet an inch. Oh, a third of an inch.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

And apparently that each barley corn at roughly a third of an inch, and this is just barley, barley knot. Well, it it was a long time ago. Okay. So they're talking about King Edward I.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

I don't even know what that means.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Well, I do know it was either King Edward the, it was either King Edward the Seventh or Eighth that like abdicated the throne, so that Queen Elizabeth II's father then became king because the other guy abdicated, because my mother is an Anglophile.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Okay, let's get back to shoes.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Right. So it was King Edward I, and you have other people other than Edwards in between. So it's like hundreds of years ago.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Barley corn will pretend that this is a whole barley corn, and in fact, this is just the kernel or the whatever inside the barley corn. And so what they did is that each barley corn, uh a third of an inch, ended up becoming the difference between shoe sizes.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Oh, come on! Oh no no. According to awesome shoe sales, so that the shoe salesman has to walk around with barley in his pocket and like the king's foot.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Well, that's pinky after a while, isn't it? Well, all right, so it's preserved. All right, so my barley. It's a little barley there. I don't want to waste my barley now. What am I gonna do? I hate wasting food.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Uh you could always trade it for shoes.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Rinse it all.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Should bring it, bring it to DSW.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

You'll never know if my.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Walk in and say, Um, can you uh I need to get some shoes. Uh this is my size. Yeah, here's my size.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

There's a foot I am, and here's the king's foot, and then plus two barley corns at the end there.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

And it'll be really awesome if the salesperson, some teenager, you're like, perfect, that's perfect. I was just reading this yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

I know exactly what to do with this. Right. I've got the perfect shoe for you. So and it comes up with a clown shoe or like a gesture shoe.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Right. Well, you know, this is actually kind of big for a foot. Like, I don't know how that's foot. No, my foot is not a foot.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

I'm just thinking.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Is your foot a foot?

SPEAKER_01 8:47

No. It's your foot a foot? That is not. No, my foot is not a foot.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Your foot is not a foot.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

It's 10 inches.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

That's crazy. That's a big foot. Back then, his big foot. I know.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Well, no, it said something. It might have been.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

It's like an overgrown hobbit.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

It was unclear as to whether or not his boot was on. But still, I mean, I don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

So the measuring shoes by the size of his boot, not his foot. So why to call it a foot? Call it a boot.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Because the back of a car in England is called the boot, so they couldn't have called it the boot.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

And how do you know that? Because your mother is an anglophile.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Because I watch English television.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

So anyway, so they're measuring feet using a banana and some old kernels.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Sort of, sort of.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

That was the technology back then.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

That was the technology. Okay. But then people moved on.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

I'm sure they did.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah. Okay, so how many feet forward did they move? We move on to the discovery of X-ray. When every when people decide that it's a really good idea to put unshielded X-ray machines into shoe stores and repeatedly radiate their children's feet in order to see.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

So a lot of superhero kids with like magic feet.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Magic feet. Yeah. Yeah, actually, I think.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Isn't that where tap dancing comes from? Like hot. Oh, so hot.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Ooh. So hot. Yeah, well, or red and then all the skin falls off and your feet fall off.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Hey, you know, you have to pay the price to be a superhero.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Everyone has to pay a price.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

So they said in um minority report.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

So that they said everybody runs. Everybody runs. Everybody runs. And it's true. Everybody runs.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Everybody runs.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

At least in TV. I don't run. I am not good at running.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Well then, you know, you won't be in the second version of Minoria Report.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Right, because I'll but just be caught. I'll be like, time to run.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

How many feet would that take?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

I don't know. I don't know. Although, although on a day when I might miss the train, I do find myself running a little bit. Yeah. But but this was called the shoe-fitting fluoroscope. And in England, it was called the pedoscope.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

That doesn't sound right at all.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

No, it doesn't sound right.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

That doesn't sound right at all.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Or the photoscope.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Photoscope. Oh. It was an X-ray fluoroscope. Very original. Photoscope.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

So the thing is, they were they already knew the photoscope. The photoscope. The piedoscope.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Very similar to the pitascope. Inventive photos. No, that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

So it was a metal construction covered in finished wood. Now I'm over at Wikipedia telling me that uh finished wood, approximately four feet tall, in the shape of a column, and you had these viewing things. And so most of the time they did it for kids because kids shoot kids would grow out of shoes a lot. But I had a patient tell me about this once, and she said that they would just do it for fun, too. They'd try on shoes or just repeat it, x-ray their feet five or six times in the course of looking at shoes in a particular day.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

My fingers just going.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

I know.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Because I mean it looks like a coffin. I mean, you might as well, you know, use it for that as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

So we should put this picture like in there. Um Wikipedia has a nice picture of this. Um displayed in the National Museum of Health and Medicine. I want to go there. Where is that?

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Which is probably in England.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

No. The U.S. National Museum of Health and Medicine. Where's the National Museum of Health and Medicine? Where is it?

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Was it where is it? Good one.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

The U.S. National Museum of Health and Medicine. I want to go.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

National Museum Health and Wellness.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Penguin.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

It is uh Maryland. Silver Spring, Maryland.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Can we go? Uh um I mean, not now. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

But like LS in Maryland, sure. Yeah, we can go.

unknown 13:32

That sounds fun.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

On the way to DC, where we're going to have a conversation about converting to the metric system. Oh, right. Yeah, good luck with that.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Good luck with the metric.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

It's the donkey. You know, the reason why they had to use x-rays is because all feet are different sizes, and calling it a foot doesn't help. No. If they used the metric system, it would have been so much easier. They wouldn't have had to x-ray the feet.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Well, no, because shoe sizes, anyway, are not based on a foot or anything. They're based on barley corn. So, you know. But the thing is, they knew that x-ray was really bad for you even back in the 40s. And so they weren't like, they didn't start to get banned until surprisingly later than that.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Oh, it was probably they were they were using it as experimentation. They were getting data.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yeah, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

It's very much like social media today.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

You know?

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Kind of like that. So we're all being radiated by the internet.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

In not so many. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

I get it. I get it. Okay.

unknown 14:45

All right.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Bluetooth. Keep that next to your head long enough.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

When was the first state to ban the use of the pedoscope?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

You said when uh which state?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Well, when and which state.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

To ban.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

When was it? Yes, when.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

No, you said which state.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

And which state.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Oh. New York State. 1903.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

1952.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Pennsylvania. So close.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

1957.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Also close. Oh. Right. And then by 1970, only 33 states had banned the machine. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

So they still have them somewhere?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

So they had them.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

And the last recorded sighting of a shoe-fitting fluoroscope in service was in the late 1970s. Guess where?

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Massachusetts.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Boston!

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Really?

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

When was it? When is in when?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

In the late 1970s. It was the last recording of a shoe-fitting fluoroscope. Oh my god. In Boston.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Wow. So like members of Aerosmith could have gotten it.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Could have.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Could've. Yeah. I missed it by that much. I don't think I ever had my feet radiated. It it oh oh man. I mean the damage that would do over because then doesn't your foot shrivel?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Wouldn't things shrivel? No, I mean, so you have to keep going in because your foot sizes change.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Well, not shrivel, but like it exposure to radiation, like for cancer care, like head and neck cancer, causes actually edema, which is swelling.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Right. Oh, so your foot gets bigger.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

And so one thing I noticed, and I don't I don't see this quite as much in people who are getting older now, but I used to see it a lot more in my patients. And this is my observation. There, if there's a doctor out there who can sort of confirm or deny this, please feel free, comment below. Because what I noticed, and the reason I ended up talking about this with this one patient was that there would be these people whose feet, particularly women whose feet were huge and ankles and kind of out of proportion with the rest of their body. You know, like because you'd look at it, you'd go, okay, yeah, they're a little overweight, but like their feet and ankles would just be like almost like difficult time, like like putting the foot flat because like all this. So I would love to know again, please comment if you're a doctor and know the answer to that question if it could be related to the pedoscope.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

The foot the photoscope.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

The pedoscope, yeah, or photoscope. But so that was the technology involved, and now we just really all you need to do is that use that little metal thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Or just yeah, or put your foot in one of those little foam things, and then it it uh you can send it off to somebody.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Oh, AI will be next. You get a little foam thing, you put your foot into there, and then AI goes and then ping.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Or when the iPad glass gets stronger, you can step on the iPad.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

You can do that with your iPad.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

No, when the iPad gets stronger, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Now you step on your iPad and it'll just crunch.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Yeah, that would be bad.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

So don't use the pedoscope app on your iPad. Or your phone.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Can it?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah, if you unless your foot is the size of the phone, then you could use the phone.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

So just be a little baby feet.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Probably a baby.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Little baby feet.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

And the baby wouldn't be heavy enough to break the phone. Well, it could probably break the phone.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

So either way, don't you have to hold kind of because if the baby's that small, then you have to hold them. They can't actually stand there quite themselves. You kind of hold them and press their foot down on the phone.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

We are talking about human baby, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Okay. I just want to make sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Well, I mean, you could do cats or you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Cat babies.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Little cat babies.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Little tow beans.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

They're about this big.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

About this big as the uh they're about yeah, they're about their their barley size.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Little kitty.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

So how's that for some technology?

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Well, you know, uh so many technologies start off very crude. At least we today we consider them crude.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

And then they just improve over time. Sometimes. Sometimes they don't.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

And yeah. Or sometimes you just realize that you don't need something as complicated as an x-ray.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Like you've gotten wooden teeth instead of your implants.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

No. No, I would not ask.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

You know, you could get like ivory teeth.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Poor elephants.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Oh no, it's after the elephant passes, and then you could use or piano keys, like an old piano that's not being used anymore. Oh really? Yeah. Just take some of that and smelt a uh smelt? Chisel. Chisel a tooth out of uh out of uh you know the C key. Anyway. Okay, anyway, technology.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Technology, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Well, I'm glad they're no longer X-raying feet.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Yeah, no, I'm I am too. I am too. Yeah. So cool.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Excellent. Well, um, are you still gonna be buying as many shoes as you used to buy?

SPEAKER_00 20:48

I already haven't been buying as many shoes as I used to buy, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

So don't you? No excuse to get your feet irradiated.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

No. No. Well then we won't. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

We'll go to the museum, but we won't use it.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

No, but that I mean, yeah, no, no, we won't use that.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

As like a like five quarters you gotta put in.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Frankenstein comes out of the box.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

The lights start to din in the museum. Oh my god, we haven't used that in a while.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah, exactly. Is that like a a a vampire bad guy? I think we gotta go.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

We've gotta go. We gotta move on out of here. We're gonna walk away.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Walk away.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

We're gonna be in your shoes.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Feet.