Time for a new weekend post. I want to share some old inventions with you. They were accepted in their time, but today they seem terrible. And they are! But first the weekend Dilbert!

Did you now that Dilbert is published every day? The creator, Scott Adams, must have a very creative mind to do that. However, the sunday edition is always a little special. To read more about Dilbert, visit Wikipedia of courseDilbert on Wikipedia.

We can say a lot about scientists. I like to give them the honor for how stunning our technology is today, but then I also must blame them for the way we screw up our planet. Anyway, along the way several rather stupid inventions has been patented. Let's look at two.

The image on the right is a commercial for a tooth paste with a twist of something. I think the image speaks for itself.

Since my field is radiation and nuclear physics, I find this one particularly amusing. What the image on your left shows is a shoe-fitting fluoroscope. Probably invented during World War I, it was used to quickly assess damages to soldiers feet, without them having to take their shoes off. The machine was later re-invented to help the average shoe-salesman determine what size your shoes should be.

The machine works like this: the customer tries on a shoe, and can't decide if it fits properly. The shoe-salesman then takes her over to the Ped-O-Scope, where she puts her feet inside the hole you can see on the image. The salesman presses a button, releasing a quite intense dose of X-RAY radiation. Both the customer and salesman can then see through the viewers. They simply see a real-time X-RAY view of the feet. The salesman could then determine if the shoe was a proper fit.

This will seem horrendous to all who understands how radiation can damage the human body. To make things worse, the producers of the machine actively targeted children in their commercials. Here's oneShoe-Fitting Fluoroscope on orau.org:

Guard their foot health carefully through correctly fitted shoes. To help ensure better fit, leading shoe stores use the ADRIAN X-Ray Machine. Whether the shoe clerk is an "old timer" with 20 or more years of fitting experience or a "Saturday extra" who has been on the job only a few weeks, ADRIAN X-Ray Machines help him give your child the most accurate fitting possible.

So you protected their health by buying properly fitted shoes. What they don't mention is how the salesmen who regularly had to use their hands inside the machine got injuries, or how a shoe model got so severely burned her foot had to be amputated. If you want to read more about the Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope I recommend this article.