The best devices for foot measurment in the show was an X-ray machine. Used during the 1950's, most shoe stores had them until the X-ray/Cancer reseach!
Just for fun, here's the history of the Brannock devicefrom The
Encyclopedia of Men's Clothes:
Foot Measurement:
A Brannock device is a metal foot-measuring device with a slide piece adjustable to show the length of the foot and another slide piece that can be moved to show the distance of the ball of the foot from the heel. This measurement is used in conjunction with the foot length and width measurements to determine the required shoe size.
Charles F. Brannock (1903-1992) of Syracuse, New York invented the "Brannock Scientific Foot Measuring Device" in 1925. Brannock earned the first patent on his foot measurer on August 28, 1928, and started the Brannock Device Company, which he ran until 1992, when he died at age 89.
Brannock grew up in the footwear business. In 1906, his father, Otis Brannock, and Ernest N. Park started the Park-Brannock Company in Syracuse, New York, USA, which became one of the largest retail shoe stores in the country.
He worked at the family shoe store where he became interested in inventing a better foot-measuring device than the crude, ruler-like implement that was then in use. He wanted to help clerks do a better job of shoe fitting. His patent application stated that the device was "particularly simple in construction and easily operated and read by unskilled clerks."
The most common foot-sizer in the 1920s was the Ritz Stick, made by the American Automatic Device Company of Chicago. A wooden ruler, the Ritz could measure a foot's width and its length from heel to toe, but not at the same time.
He spent his college days at the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity house obsessively tinkering with prototypes using an Erector set, and updating schematic drawings (often at all hours of the night, as His roommate, Roy Simmons, Sr. later recalled).
Charles graduated from Syracuse in 1925 in business administration and begin to assemble the device in the Park-Brannock shoe store in order to give it a trial on the sales floor.
It was a marked improvement over size-sticks because it measured not just foot length but measured the foot three ways at once: width, heel-to-toe length and length from the heel to the ball of the foot. The heel-to-ball measurement, the most critical measurement in fitting heeled shoes, made his device unique.
Originally used exclusively in his family's store it helped attract more customers with the promise of better fitting footwear. The unique sizer was "scientific" looking, and made of brightly polished aluminum.
Brannock continued to improve the device and applied for another patent on his "perfected" device, which was granted in 1929.
Charles Brannock began offering the device to shoe retailers first on a rental basis and then by sale. He personally promoted his invention at the store, in local newspapers, in national shoe trade publications, and at the National Shoe Fair in Chicago from 1938 to 1968. He encouraged shoe storeowners to use the Brannock Device when they advertised their businesses.
By 1934, 24 shoe manufacturers distributed Brannock Devices and it was the standard foot-measuring device for the industry, as it remains today.
In 1931, Captain Guy E. Davis, the executive officer of the battleship Texas discovered that many of his sailors suffered foot problems. Poorly fitting shoes were suspected. When the battleship's supply officer bought a pair of shoes at a San Francisco store, the clerk measured his feet with a Brannock Device. The shoes fit so well that the officer ordered a Brannock for the Texas.
The Device passed with flying colors, and soon after the Naval Clothing Depot requested that the Brannock Company enter into a formal contract with the United States Government to equip the entire U.S. Navy with Brannock Foot Measuring Devices.
In 1947, Brannock moved the device company to a machine shop at 509 East Fayette Street in Syracuse, where it remained for 50 years.
Charles Brannock became the CEO of Park-Brannock after both his father and Ernest Park died in 1962. Park-Brannock closed its doors in 1981, after the Hotel Syracuse offered to purchase the property for its new Hilton Tower.
Charles Brannock died on November 22, 1992, at the age of 89. Salvatore Leonardi purchased the company in 1993 from the Brannock Estate. Leonardi continues to manufacture Brannock devices in a factory in Liverpool, New York.
The Brannock Device is based on "barleycorn technology" first developed in 1324.
Barleycorn kernels (the grain of barley) were used as early as Roman times as a unit of measurement since the seeds were uniform in size. In 1324 King Edward II of England (King 1307 - 1327, House of Plantagenet) wanted to create a standard system of foot measurements to reduce the amount of time needed to make shoes.
He ordered the largest foot he could find measured with barleycorn. England's then-largest foot was 39 kernels long, (12 inches!) and because three barleycorns fit into one inch, Edward divided 39 by three and decreed that the result, 13, would be the largest shoe size, and that all other sizes be measured in third-inch increments down from size 13. This also established the measurement of a foot equal to 12 inches.
British cobblers adopted the measurement method and begin to make shoes in standard sizes. Each full size, up or down, is equivalent to 1/3 inch, and each half-size is 1/6 inch. So if your foot is 11 inches long your shoe size is ten (US).
