100 Objects #11: Brannock Device

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0:43Nothing to be afraid of. We're saved. Get T-Mobile 5G home internet delivered the same day. Powered by DoorDash. Just$35 a month with auto pay and a voice line. Plus taxes and fees. Same-day delivery for most internet-eligible customers. See if it's an option during checkout. 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.

1:24and 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 toe measurement, but a different arch measurement. And so they might need different size 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 them more smoothly. And nothing like that had ever been devised before.

2:04And 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 Brannock 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 loved 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.

2:43I 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 Brannock device really is good for only one thing, but it's the perfect example of that thing, right?

3:24In 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.

4:09compare 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 and people can wrap their head around that and there's something satisfying about that

4:33From 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.

5:01I've wanted to tell the story of why the Brannock 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 Beer Frame. He also runs a blog devoted to the minutiae 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.

5:43Pretty 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 Brank 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.

6:24because 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 1903 in Syracuse, New York. Charles Branick had shoes and shoe sales in his blood, you might say. His father co-owned the Park Branick 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.

7:12The 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 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 Branick 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.

7:51And 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 that thing that comes up with, the Brannock device, could you describe it? You have one next to you. Of course you do. So it's a metal object. It has two sort of cupped areas, one at each end. And that's so you can put your heel to measure one foot in this sort of cupped receptacle and then turn the brand device around to do the other foot. It has one sliding piece that moves backward and forward to measure the width of your foot. And then it has another sliding piece to measure your arch length.

8:32And then it has yet another sliding piece for the length of your foot. So it's metal. The one I'm holding is made of aluminum, which has been the case for decades now. Now they've been made out of aluminum. I believe the early ones were made of steel. And it feels solid, but not too heavy. And I don't know how else to say this. It just looks like it knows what it's doing. It looks so official and professional. And it has so many calibrations and numbers on it. I mean, that could just be nonsense, right? You could just put a lot of ruled lines and numerals on things and just make it seem like, you know, a thermometer or a barometer or something like that.

9:15But it has this feel of a finely tuned, finely calibrated instrument. And it is. It's hard to pin down the exact birth date of the Brannock device. But Paul says an early version was definitely in use by 1925. And again, that was really the point. Charles Brannock invented this not to be an industry tool, but to give his family shoe store a competitive sales advantage. But other stores did take notice. And soon there was demand from other outlets, not just in Syracuse, but out of town, around the country. So Brannock filed a patent that wouldn't be granted until 1928. But in the meantime, he got busy.

10:00He initially thought he would just need a handful of prototypes to use at his family's store. But now that there was a demand, he needed to create a company. And so he launched the Brannock Device Company in Syracuse to manufacture these things. It's almost a quaint idea of how invention works. Charles Brannock saw a need, he made a thing, and people wanted it. So Brannock manufactured more and sold them to people who needed them. And as demand grew, the Brannock Company grew with it. Well, let's put it this way. If it was launched in Syracuse in 1925, by 1929, international sales were starting.

10:40Okay, so not just around the country, but around the world or at least across the ocean in Europe. So that's a pretty big deal. Charles Brannock developed a junior model because kids' feet are not just smaller than adult feet, they're proportioned differently. Brannock took his role in shoe fitting very seriously. He had this quote early in his Brannock career where he said,

11:16The junior model came out in 1933, and that same year, Brannock got his big break. A United States Navy ship's captain noticed that his sailors were complaining a lot of ill-fitting shoes. So he knew of the Brannock device. It's not clear if he was from Syracuse or if he had just encountered it at another shoe store. And he had his sailors, when they were docked somewhere, refitted with a Brannock device. And he was so happy with the results because his sailors were no longer complaining that he wrote an article in the July 1933 issue of a publication called United States Naval Institute Proceedings, where he described how the Brannock device had eliminated foot troubles aboard his ship.

12:02Charles Branick heard about the article, and ever the believer in his own invention, he sent copies of it to important people around the armed forces. Pretty soon, most branches of the U.S. military were using Branick devices to outfit their service members. Then, on December 7th, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. entered World War II. Suddenly, there's a huge demand because there's a huge surge in enlistment in the U.S. armed forces, and the military wants Brannock devices because they need to fit all these people. And Brannock makes a modification. Instead of the single Brannock device, which you turn around to measure each foot, you put your heel in one end to do the right foot and the other end for the left foot, he comes up with a double Brannock device, which is sort of two Brannock devices mounted on a board.

12:54And I actually have one of these that was made for the Air Force. and the idea is that if you have all these new enlistees and they're sort of marching through getting fitted for uniforms and you're giving them their crew cut and all that you know so that they could uh you know go off to war you you can't waste time turning the device around of course and so you have this double brannock device so that they can have both feet measured simultaneously and it's more efficient. It's faster. I mean, there's a funny, there's like an old, I don't know where this comes from, some general that says like an army marches on his stomach, like meaning that you have to keep the troops well fed.

13:32But the truth is, is that armies march on their feet. Yeah, like your boots and your shoes. It's a big deal. And I like to say that's how Charles Brennan helped defeat fascism. You know, it's like it's literally true. He had a role in U.S. military preparedness and the call to action.

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17:40The Brannock device of today is very close to the one Charles Brannock introduced in his father's shoe store in the mid-1920s. He did make small refinements over the years, but nothing major. And he didn't really need to make many changes because the Brannock device was what we would now call a category killer. You know, that term didn't exist back in his day, but it essentially wiped out the competition. Nobody ever seriously challenged it. And it really was and still is the gold standard. There are Brandeck device copycats out there. The patent expired decades ago, so there's nothing the company can do.

18:20These imitations are made abroad in places where materials and labor are cheaper. But they're also made more cheaply. If you were at a shoe store and saw a knockoff Brannock, especially if it was more than a few years old, you could see the difference in terms of like the fixtures and the fittings just aren't as nicely calibrated. It's not as well made. Charles Brannock died in 1992 at the age of 89. He was a lifelong bachelor, married only to his invention, and he never invented anything else. It's really interesting to me. So many inventors, you know, they get the bug to invent something and they just keep going.

19:01Charles Brannock kind of nailed it on the first shot. He was only in his 20s, his early 20s. And it was one and done. Brannock had no children and no succession plan. But keeping in line with their founders' values, the company made a very unusual decision about how to move forward. They set a fixed price for the sale of the company, and they asked potential buyers to make their case. One requirement was that the new owner had a promise to keep manufacturing in Syracuse for at least five years. It was almost like a job application. Like, who is worthy to become the steward of this iconic American product?

19:39American manufacturing had been on the decline since the 1980s, so this requirement wasn't just unusual. It was making a statement. The Brandt Device company was saying that a sustainable American-made product is still possible. And the plan worked. Half a dozen people applied to buy the company, most of them from the shoe industry. But there was this one guy named Salvador Leonardo. He was in manufacturing in upstate New York. He had a family company that was founded by his father in the 1940s. They were arguably even more specialized than the Brandt Device. They made these metal frames for purses and handbags.

20:19Like if you can imagine how a handbag opens and closes the sort of metal frame around the flaps, that's what they made. Like a clutch purse style, I guess. That's a really satisfying snap when it comes together like a clamshell. Exactly. But Sal Leonardi wanted to go into business for himself, sort of have his own business, something that he could call his own. and he thought, oh, this, you know, this is the perfect thing I can do. Sal Leonardi eventually passed the company down to his son-in-law, Tim Follett. And both men really seem to embody what makes the brand device special. They are very low-key, kind of not flashy people.

21:00And I don't mean that in a negative way. On the contrary, they really believe that if you make a quality product, it speaks for itself. And I've interviewed them and known them for a while now. And they believe strongly in the idea of you make it better, not faster. You use good materials, you hire good people. And they are not sort of publicity seekers. And I think there's a lot to be said for that. It seems almost inconceivable in today's marketplace of influencers and social media and all the rest where everything is hype, hype, hype and the attention economy and all of that. That is not how the Brannock device has been promoted.

21:44Yeah. I mean, it's captured your attention, certainly, but it has not captured everyone else's attention. The Brannock device has captured my attention, too. And there's one story about the Brannock device company that I think encapsulates my fascination with this object, both the design and what it says about business. About 20 years ago, current Brannock president Tim Follett saw an opportunity. The discount chain Payless Shoe Source had started introducing foot measuring devices into their stores for the first time. Here's Tim. And they were considering the knockoffs. But these knockoffs weren't very good.

22:22They are poor quality. As a matter of fact, some of them actually send a little screwdriver with them and an extra screw. I don't know how you could be an owner of any establishment. And, you know, it's like getting your car with an extra transmission. And as a brand that relied on selling a large volume of cheap shoes, Tim knew that Payless needed a device that would stand up to abuse. So I went to a local mall and I took a bunch of brand new devices, our brand new devices, and they actually had some knockoffs in the mall. So I traded with the manager. I took the old broken ones and gave him some of ours.

22:58Tim took those knockoff Brannock devices home, figured out who at Payless headquarters was in charge of purchasing them, and sent him the broken devices. And I said, if you buy the knockoffs, this is what you're buying. And I said, in five years, this is what your store is going to be filled with. And that reflects poorly on your store. It's like going into a restaurant, a nice restaurant, and having broken chairs. It worked. We ended up getting all of Payless' business for many, many years as an investment. But you won't find a brand device in a Payless these days, because there are no Payless stores anymore.

23:36Yeah, they went out of business. Payless went bankrupt in 2019 for a lot of reasons. Mall traffic had plummeted. They had a hard time competing with online companies like Zappos. But there's something else that contributed to the downfall of Payless, A trend that's been growing in the American financial system since the 1980s. Private equity. Here's where I'm going to go on a bit of a digression, but I assure you I'll eventually tie it back to the beautiful simplicity of the Brannock device in the Brannock device company. You may have heard private equity linked to the fight over Taylor Swift's masters.

24:12Or you might remember that 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney had been the CEO of a private equity firm called Bain Capital. and private equity encompasses a lot of things. But what most people mean when they talk about it is something called a leveraged buyout. Here's the basic idea. A private equity firm identifies a company that they want to buy and they get a sale price for that company. But the key here is that the private equity firm pays only a portion of that sale price, usually between 10 and 30%. The rest of the sale is covered by a loan from a bank. So in that way, it's kind of like a home mortgage, except with a leveraged buyout, the company being bought is taking on the debt of a loan.

24:57They're the ones incurring the risk. Private equity firms pick companies they feel have steady revenue, but room for improvement. The firm installs their own leadership to restructure the business, and the goal is to make the company stronger and to sell it again at a profit. But often the restructuring means layoffs and other big cuts. and taking a company and saddling them with a ton of debt right away can make these turnarounds really difficult, especially if the company is already struggling. Toys R Us, Joanne's Fabrics, Sports Authority, Radio Shack, all these companies and their employees are victims of leveraged buyouts.

25:36And then there's Payless. In 2012, a group of private equity firms purchased Payless for$2 billion. They saw an opportunity to modernize a legacy chain. Payless was turning a profit under this new ownership, but that wasn't enough. Private equity firms want to make money for their investors, not just when they sell the company down the line, but they want to make money right away. So Payless had to pay dividends to their new shareholders, which ended up erasing all the profits they made. Any money that could have gone to their workers or passed along to the consumers in the form of better products or cheaper prices went straight to the investors.