If you want to win a bet at your holiday table, try to see if anyone can guess the following:
“I’m going to show you a device that virtually everyone can recognize, they know where they have seen it, and most have used it at some point or another in their lives. It’s unlikely you know it’s name.”
A little history of measurement. The human body was often used as a common description of length. The Romans, who were quite accurate builders, used the pes, or the foot. A “foot” was 4 palmi or handbreadths, or “hands” measured across from pinkie to index finger at the knuckle. This system may have originated with the Babylonians, who were also good builders.
Hands are still used to describe the height of a standing horse. Each Hand contained 16 Digiti, or finger breadths, each of which was therefore three-quarters of an inch long—and the foot contained 12 Unciae or inches.
Of course, as the Roman empire spread, and then fell, standards of measure deviated from the standard Roman foot.
Business people hated the inconsistencies. Cordwainers (shoemakers) had been lobbying for standards. The Poulan, (the exaggerated medieval long-toed shoes) were falling from favor. In 1324 King Edward II, declared that an inch would be exactly the length of three barleycorns dry end to end. The Welsh had invented a barleycorn standard. Barleycorns are consistent in size.
Shoemakers, eager to make lasts (molds) for each size foot, added or subtracted or added one barleycorn (1/3 inch) for each shoe size. Everyone was happy; except in France where they wanted to use millimeter measurements, and they came up with the French Point to measure shoes in the late 1700s. US makers copied the Barleycorn system but adjusted because the British start counting at 0 and in the US they wanted to start at size 1 (7 & 2/3 inches). Then they each came up with new systems for kids, and women, because length and width don’t grow proportionally the same in men and women.
By 1890s cordwainers were being replaced by mass-produced shoes, sold in stores. Various ways to measure feet were used, but the Ritz Stick was invented in 1916 and standardized the length measurement of feet. The ruler with a sliding block of wood was found in nearly every shoe store.
The Ritz Stick patent application awarded 1916
But width and arch were still problems.
So even if you know the length of your longest foot, (shoes are fit to the longest one because most manufacturers will not make different sizes for each foot), you can still wind up with a poorly fitting pair.
Charles Brannock, who worked in his father’s shoe store in Syracuse, thought he could do better. As a Syracuse University student, he invented the Brannock Device in 1922, as a way to quickly measure length, width, and arch size. He patented the device in 1925 and by the 1930s it was used by all the finer shoe sellers, first as a competitive advantage, and then as a necessity.
1935 ad for Berkely Shoes noting the “New Brannock device”
His company made the device out of high-quality steel. He built a factory and resisted any efforts to cheapen the device. They last up to 15 years in stores. The US Army purchased them, and infantrymen had better-fitting boots than their enemies in World War II.
It’s likely more people have been measured with the Brannock than any other product with second place going to the Continental Beam Scale which was in most doctor’s offices from the 1920’s to the 1990s. The Brannock Device has a place in the Smithsonian’s Inventions and Innovations Museum.
Charles Brannock sold the company before he died in 1992, but required the purchaser to keep up the quality of materials as part of the purchase.
Is the end near?
3D foot scanners (which can create a full model of the foot) are being deployed in stores as well as apps for at-home measurement. Some companies, like boot retailer RedWing, are creating truly made-to-foot boots. SafeSize is a company that is trying to take the guesswork and waste out of the modern shoe-buying experience which is more and more an online purchase. People typically order 2 or 3 pairs, ship them, and then return those that don’t fit properly. With a digital foot, the retailer could ‘fit’ the buyer much more accurately, much like the old-fashioned foot store.
With no standard yet emerging, and a high cost of implementation, you may still find the Brannock still hanging around for a few more years. 100 years in and they still have 12 different models for sale and are considering getting into the digital business.