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X-Ray machines in shoe shops.


Waterside Echo

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I can recall using one of these machines in a shop which was either on Fargate or opposite the Peace Gardens, in the very late 60's / early 70's. That must have been the last time they were used as the next time I went for shoes it was that board with the metal slider for length and the wrap around tape for width.

Although Timpsons was a big shoe company with many branches (Haymarket for example) to fit in with BASSWRITER's description of the location it would have to have been the branch on Pinstone Street.

It is seen here in the early 1970's on the extreme left of the picture, The end of the word "shoes" in the shop name "Timpsons Shoes" can just be made out.

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Haymarket seems to ring a bell, no idea of the name of the shop though. W/E. P S do not let vox kid you on that he can remember them, they had all been condemned by the time he had started walking.

Thanks WE I've been trying to forget that I remember the 50's for years. :)

What I should have said was "I met a bloke who said that his next-door neighbor's son, once worked with a man, who's grandfather's local milkman said he thinks he'd seen one." lol

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I can recall using one of these machines in a shop which was either on Fargate or opposite the Peace Gardens, in the very late 60's / early 70's. That must have been the last time they were used as the next time I went for shoes it was that board with the metal slider for length and the wrap around tape for width.

I can remember this machine and it was Clarks shoe shop I remember because they made sensible shoes that fitted well.........not exactly what I wanted though lol

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I remember this, but I can't think of the shop, and I'm sure it was still on the go when my children were small in the 70's. No doubt, it was banned under Health and Safety because of radiation <_<

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My Auntie used to work in the Clarks shoe section in the OLD Cole Bros at the bottom of Fargate. That would have been the late 50's early 60's. I remember very clearly going into the shop with my Mum to go and see her. While Mum and Aunty Ann chatted I was allowed to 'play' on the x ray machine and see the bones in my feet.

I don't know about any other shop but there was definatly one in Coles.

I still have both my feet by the way - but sadly my Aunty died of cancer when she was relativly young (in her 50's)

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My Auntie used to work in the Clarks shoe section in the OLD Cole Bros at the bottom of Fargate. That would have been the late 50's early 60's. I remember very clearly going into the shop with my Mum to go and see her. While Mum and Aunty Ann chatted I was allowed to 'play' on the x ray machine and see the bones in my feet.

I don't know about any other shop but there was definatly one in Coles.

I still have both my feet by the way - but sadly my Aunty died of cancer when she was relativly young (in her 50's)

So I suppose that if there was one in that branch of Clarke's they were probably in all the Clarke's branches.

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I remember this, but I can't think of the shop, and I'm sure it was still on the go when my children were small in the 70's. No doubt, it was banned under Health and Safety because of radiation <_<

Something else has come back to me. The shop where I saw the X Ray machine had a downstairs and that's where the machine was. Probably to protect the passing shoppers from the radiation !

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My Auntie used to work in the Clarks shoe section in the OLD Cole Bros at the bottom of Fargate. That would have been the late 50's early 60's. I remember very clearly going into the shop with my Mum to go and see her. While Mum and Aunty Ann chatted I was allowed to 'play' on the x ray machine and see the bones in my feet.

I don't know about any other shop but there was definatly one in Coles.

I still have both my feet by the way - but sadly my Aunty died of cancer when she was relativly young (in her 50's)

An X-ray machine as a toy :blink:

Even ignoring the dangers of X-radiation and its links to cancer the machine itself requires very high voltages to work.

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Even now, a lot of RAF camps cannot be used because after the war, a lot of the aircraft were burnt on the fields and so the ground is now contaminated with radioactive paint from the dials.

Could that be one of the reasons why the site of the old RAF camp at Norton has never been developed ? W/E.

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Could that be one of the reasons why the site of the old RAF camp at Norton has never been developed ? W/E.

I don't think so Waterside Echo.

Both myself and Stuart frequently drive past Norton Aerodrome at night on the way back from each other's houses.

Neither of us has noticed that dull eerie glow caused by ionising radiation coming out of the camp. lol

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I

Even now, a lot of RAF camps cannot be used because after the war, a lot of the aircraft were burnt on the fields and so the ground is now contaminated with radioactive paint from the dials.

I remember reading about an instance where thousands of cardboard boxes of obsolete GPO or perhaps BT trimphones were stacked to the roof in an old warehouse.

They were forgotten about for years and the warehouse roof began to leak.

The damp cardboard boxes began to collapse under the weight of the boxes above and the Trimphones were crushed.

Unfortunately the 'phones were fitted with a glass tube filled with a radio-active gas, Tritium, to illuminate the dials.

Residues from the gas were washed into the floor and I believe the clean up costs were astronomic.

HD

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I remember reading about an instance where thousands of cardboard boxes of obsolete GPO or perhaps BT trimphones were stacked to the roof in an old warehouse.

They were forgotten about for years and the warehouse roof began to leak.

The damp cardboard boxes began to collapse under the weight of the boxes above and the Trimphones were crushed.

Unfortunately the 'phones were fitted with a glass tube filled with a radio-active gas, Tritium, to illuminate the dials.

Residues from the gas were washed into the floor and I believe the clean up costs were astronomic.

HD

Tritium, or 3-hydrogen is extremely rare, I wonder where they got that from? Some nuclear plant somewhere.

Hydrogen has 3 isotopes,

Normal mass 1 or 1-hydrogen makes up well over 99% of all hydrogen.

Heavy hydrogen, Deuterium or 2-hydrogen makes up most of the rest.

Had Germany ever managed todevelop their own atomic bomb (the V3, V4 or V5 weapon) it would have been a fusion bomb based upon 2-hydrogen extracted by electrolysis of millions of gallons of water to leave just a small amount of heavy water containing the required isotope. The film "The heros of Telemark" is about who this development was stopped. A fusion bomb (a hydrogen bomb) would have been much more powerful than the fission bombs, powered by Uranium and Plutonium isotopes, which were developed in America and used against Japan at the end of the war.

Tritium or 3-hydrogen is very rare on Earth fortunately as it can be used in similar fusion bombs, - it is the same reaction that powers the Sun.

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