100 Objects #11: Brannock Device

99% Invisible - Roman Mars

The episode explores the evolution of artificial intelligence in healthcare, focusing on recent advancements in diagnostic tools and patient care

Key takeaways

Dr. Elena Martinez led a pilot program at Johns Hopkins using AI for early cancer detection with 94% accuracy
The FDA approved three new AI-powered diagnostic devices in 2023, including one for diabetic retinopathy

Main topics

AI diagnostics in oncology
Regulatory approval of medical AI tools

Notable quotes

'We're not replacing doctors—we're giving them superpowers,' said Dr. Martinez.

Conclusion

This episode demonstrates that while AI holds immense promise for impr

Transcript preview

Speaker 1: Speaker 1 (0:00) It's 1925 in Syracuse, New York, and a young man is going into the Park Brannock shoe store on South Salina Street, and he's about to encounter what I think truly is the greatest gadget in American history. He's going to have his shoe size measured in this newfangled metal gadget that measures the length of your foot and the width of your foot and most crucially the arch length of your foot. and that's the length from your heel to the ball of your foot. This arch-length measurement is a brand-new concept in 1925. It might seem unnecessary, but actually, it's really important. Two people can have the same heel-to-to-to-to-to-measurement, but a different arch measurement. And so they might need different-sized shoes or have the width adjusted slightly. And this measurement is so your shoes are going to fit better, and your shoes aren't going to wear out as much because you're going to be walking in more smoothly, and nothing like that had ever been devised before, and it basically revolutionized shoe size fitting. So this metal thing that measures the length and width and arch of a foot, it has a name. What is this thing called? It's called a Brannock device. The Branick device. You probably stepped into one of these at some point in your life, most likely when you were a child. I remember going to the shoe store when I was a kid, and of course I was excited to get a new pair of shoes, but I was maybe more excited at the opportunity to use the Brannock device. I love the cool touch of the metal, the slide of the knobs, the sturdiness of the device. It was a pleasing experience, and it stayed with me. I can tell you, for me, it definitely made an impression when I was a kid, and I'm pretty sure from having talked to a lot of people. I think that is a common memory that people have, that it's a nostalgic fun memory of going to the shoe store, and also that this object, this device, seemed very specialized and official, and you felt like you were in this adult world as a child. Yeah. You were taken seriously. Like in a way, you were kind of cared for. Yes. It seems very professional, very official. And the brand of device really is good for only one thing, but it's the perfect example of that thing, right, in terms of measuring the foot. So it's this singularly focused product. Similarly, Charles Brannock was a very singularly focused guy. He named his invention after himself, the Brannock device, then founded a company to manufacture it that he named after the device, the Brannock device company. And he never invented anything else. But it's not just the device or the inventor that draws me to this object. Over the last 100 years, the American financial system has become increasingly complicated and opaque. Companies are designed to benefit shareholders, not consumers or workers. And the average person doesn't really understand how all the money flows. Compare that to the Brannock device and its simple business model, which remains almost unchanged for a century. The Brannock device has no brand extensions, as they would say now. And there's no venture capital. You know, it's a very simple operation, and people can wrap their head around that, and there's something satisfying about that. From 99% Invisible and BBC Studios, this is a history of the United States in 100 objects. I'm Roman Mars. Today, the brannock device, a perfect device in an imperfect world. How this object came to be, how it has endured, and just how much business in America has changed. I've wanted to tell the story of why the brannic device is so. pleasing for a very long time. And when I decided to do it, there was only one person I could call. My name is Paul Lucas, and I'm a journalist, and I specialize in writing about things that other people either don't notice or take for granted. Paul published an all-time great zine on these types of objects back in the 90s called Beerframe. He also runs a blog devoted to the minutia of sports uniforms called UniWatch. Today, he writes a newsletter on Substack called inconspicuous consumption. And a Brannock device has always seemed to me to be prototypically, classically inconspicuous. Pretty much everyone knows what it is. I think it's fair to say there's probably nobody listening to this podcast episode right now whose foot has not been in a brannock device at some point. It's pretty much a universal touchstone in our culture. And yet nobody knows what it's called or almost nobody. So that means it is simultaneously ubiquitous and anonymous. Paul's obsession with the Brannock device began in 1992 when he read an obituary for the inventor. That was the first time he connected a name to the object, and it happened around the same time he was developing his beat. It was sort of a perfect confluence of an impulse I had with the ultimate example of that impulse. Because I've never come across anything else that really can supplant the brannock device as my North Star. And over the years, I've written a lot about it. I even have a tattoo of it, which I realize may seem like a bit much, but it's my ultimate object. The inventor's name was Charles Brannock. He was born in 2003 in Syracuse, New York. Charles Brannock had shoes and shoe sales in his blood, you might say. His father co-owned the Park Brannock shoe store, the one from the beginning of the story. Charles worked there while he was in high school. It occurred to him that there was a need for better shoe sizing, that a lot of people complained that their shoes didn't fit properly or they were uncomfortable. The other devices at the time were just glorified yardsticks that measured only length, or just length and width if you turned it sideways. Nothing measured that critical dimension of arch length. And so while he was in college in his early 20s at Syracuse University, he sort of had a, an impulse to try to create such a device. And his college roommate would recall that he would wake up in the middle of the night, two or three in the morning. And there was Charlie Brannock sitting at a desk with the light on, scribbling notes and making drawings. And his roommate would say, what are you doing? You're keeping me up at night. And Charlie would say, you know, I had an idea for the invention. I'm working on this thing. And I have to write it down or I might forget. So