I think Madam needs the extra broad fitting

Those of you of a certain age may remember the thrill of sticking your feet into a glowing x-ray machine when you visited the shoe shop. By 'eck we knew how to enjoy ourselves in them days!

Pedoscopes, as the x-ray machines were known, were used in European and North American shoe shops during the middle of the 20th century. They created X-ray images of the foot without the need to remove the shoe. They consisted of a large wooden box with a hole near the bottom into which the feet was placed. The length of X-ray exposure could be altered depending on whether you were a man, woman or child. The fluorescent image of the foot bones within the shoe were viewed through a hole in the top of the cabinet by the shoe fitter. Two other holes were used by the child and the parent or guardian. Pedoscopes were a common fixture in shoe shps during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, but health concerns, especially for the staff using them throughout their working day, saw the machines eventually withdrawn.

Today was a grey, wet day and so, without much else much to fill my mind I started to think about what you might have seen if you could have persuaded an elephant to stick her foot in one of these machines. Well, here is the answer. You will see that inside all that tough skin the bones of an elephant foot are pretty much similar to your own, although just a tad bigger.

Well, I did say it was pretty boring day!