The commercial birth of the X-ray shoe-fitting machine was shadowed by competing accusations of invention theft. Jacob Lowe filed a United States patent application in 1919 and demonstrated a modified medical fluoroscope at shoe-retailer conventions in Boston in 1920 and Milwaukee in 1921; his patent was granted in 1927 and assigned to the Adrian Company of Milwaukee for $15,000. Syl Adrian, however, credited his brother Matthew Adrian with inventing and building the first machine in Milwaukee, and Matthew's name appeared in a 1922 advertisement. Clarence Karrer, the son of an X-ray equipment distributor, offered a still different account, claiming that he built the first unit in Milwaukee in 1924 and that an employee of his father had stolen and patented the idea. Across the Atlantic, the British Pedoscope Company filed its own patent application in 1924, received a patent in 1926, and claimed to have manufactured the machines since 1920. The surviving record therefore documents a real and commercially important patent dispute, but it does not conclusively establish which claimant created the first shoe fluoroscope. The rival claims helped define a lucrative international market eventually dominated by the X-ray Shoe Fitter Corporation and Pedoscope Company.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1920s
Who Invented the Pedoscope? Milwaukee's Disputed Patent Battle Over X-Ray Shoes
Jacob Lowe, Adrian Company, X-ray Shoe Fitter Corporation, and Pedoscope Company / 1920s
The commercial birth of the X-ray shoe-fitting machine was shadowed by competing accusations of invention theft. Jacob Lowe filed a United States patent application in 1919 and demonstrated a modified medical fluoroscope at shoe-retailer conventions in Boston in 1920 and Milwaukee in 1921; his patent was granted in 1927 and assigned to the Adrian Company of Milwaukee for $15,000. Syl Adrian, however, credited his brother Matthew Adrian with inventing and building the first machine in Milwaukee, and Matthew's name appeared in a 1922 advertisement. Clarence Karrer, the son of an X-ray equipment distributor, offered a still different account, claiming that he built the first unit in Milwaukee in 1924 and that an employee of his father had stolen and patented the idea. Across the Atlantic, the British Pedoscope Company filed its own patent application in 1924, received a patent in 1926, and claimed to have manufactured the machines since 1920. The surviving record therefore documents a real and commercially important patent dispute, but it does not conclusively establish which claimant created the first shoe fluoroscope. The rival claims helped define a lucrative international market eventually dominated by the X-ray Shoe Fitter Corporation and Pedoscope Company.
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