Mammograms don’t command much attention until the yearly appointment rolls around. My wife faces the hassle of the exam alone, of course, but we worry together until the results come back. Like any other cancer test—hello there, prostate—the technology leaves us feeling thankful but not exactly thrilled. It’s just one of those preventive-care indignities of middle age that have become routine.
So I was taken aback when a retired CIA officer I know recently told me a fascinating fact: Modern mammography was invented with help from American spies. Or, more precisely, by people who do the lab work for spies, technologists inside an intelligence agency so secret the U.S. government didn’t even admit it existed until 1992.
