WILLIAM SCHOLL: The Scholl family had been foot-doctoring for 14 years - and had patented the corn-pad - by the time William Howard Scholl was born, but his is the name everybody knows, because he invented the exercise sandal.
William Scholl, who died on March 15th aged 81, was the brother of William Matthias Scholl, the original "Dr Scholl". He was born on September 24th, 1920, in London after his father moved from the US in 1911 to register his business in England as a base for expansion into Europe.
He was educated at St Edmund's College, Hertfordshire, and Christ's College, Cambridge. At the outbreak of the second World War, he was in the US and, unable to return to join the British forces, he enlisted in the US army as an intelligence officer.
Unable to exploit the wartime opportunities for foot-soothing services - their supports needed rubber and plastics, raw materials in short supply - Scholl's Clerkenwell factory continued to make equipment for chiropodists.
After the Pacific war ended in August 1945, William Scholl returned to Britain as family heir apparent, determined to liberate feet, at the time seen as ugly, smelly and comic - the word "bunion" was good for a laugh after generations of men had worn ill-fitting, mass-produced shoes, and more women with each decade had followed extremes of fashion.
As soon as supplies made it possible, he introduced comforting novelties - such as air-pillow insoles and heel rasps - packaging them in blue and yellow livery like any household product, not "something from the chemist".
There had been a sandal cult among rebellious healthy livers from the 1920s onwards, and leather and rubber shortages during the war had revived the European interest in wooden clogs, or shoes with wood soles; postwar examples were common in Scandinavia, Germany and eastern Europe.
Indeed, the sandals William Scholl found as models for female footwear in the late 1950s were either Finnish or German. He reworked them, carving the beechwood platform to shape to the foot. The idea was to promote them as, "looking good and doing you good", and to sell them in Scholl shops, which already stocked a range of remedial footwear.
He had also realised that stiletto heels, popularised in the mid-1950s, and the excesses of winkle-picker shoes caused discomfort in the present and promised future pain. In contrast, the grip of his sandal, contoured in the footbed, exercised arch and leg muscles - the foot lifted away from the base, forcing the toes to curl to keep it on, and slapped back on the heel with a characteristic sound.
The exercise sandal was introduced in Britain in 1961, and by the mid-1960s was selling two million pairs a year. In the US, they sold a million pairs annually by 1972. They became vernacular fashion from Woodstock in 1969 to around 1975, worn with droopy skirt and crochet shawl.
After his uncle's death in 1968, William Scholl inherited the Chicago-based company; he took it public in 1971, and sold it to the Schering-Plough HealthCare Corporation in 1979, continuing as head of the products division until his retirement in 1984. The following year, the sandal was discontinued, although the design remained a favourite in Germany and Italy. A US company, Pagoda, bought the rights to manufacture in 1991, and reintroduced the sandals in 1993.
They were no longer made in the US, but sourced in Italy, and sold as fashion items in shoe shops, not as footcare next to fungicide sprays. They came in leopardskin, black patent and bright colours - as well as the original navy, white and beige. They were sent them down the catwalk; there was a Gucci edition and a Gap copy. The clack and slap sounds have not changed, though the sandals are now fashion classics.
William Howard Scholl: born 1920; died, March 2002