www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4225505.html
Astronaut Neil Armstrong's first words from the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, now can be confidently recast, according to the research, as, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." It is the more dramatic and grammatically correct phrasing that Armstrong, now 76, has often said was the version he transmitted to NASA's Mission Control for broadcast to worldwide television. With the technology of the 1960s, however, his global audience heard his comment without the "a," making it "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" a phrase that technically gave the same meaning of humankind to "man" and "mankind." The discrepancy has been widely debated for years by historians, academics and fans of space travel, with the "a" sometimes appearing in parentheses in government documents and Armstrong being listed on unofficial Web sites as being guilty of a momentous flub. The missing one-letter word was found this month in a software analysis of Armstrong's famous phrase by Peter Shann Ford, a Sydney, Australia-based computer programmer. Ford's company, Control Bionics, specializes in helping physically handicapped people use their nerve impulses to communicate through computers. On Thursday, Ford and Auburn University historian James R Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented the findings to Armstrong and others in a meeting at the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC They repeated the presentation at NASA's Washington headquarters, which has long backed Armstrong's version of the phrasing. "I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford's analysis of it and I find the technology interesting and useful," Armstrong said in a statement. " in a total of 35 milliseconds, 10 times too fast for the "a" to be audible. The "a" was transmitted, though, and can be verified in an analysis using a Canadian sound editing software called GoldWave , Ford said. Critics have suggested that Armstrong either botched a missive written for him by a government official ahead of his lunar step or that the poor wording was a sign of his lack of awareness of its significance. com notes, "Mr Armstrong's quote left out that ever important letter "a". one giant leap for mankind' should have been 'One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind,' Without it he basically said, 'One small step for mankind; However, Armstrong told biographer Hansen that he composed the phrase during the six hours and 40 minutes between his drama-tinged landing and the time he and Apollo 11 crewmate Buzz Aldrin emerged from their lander, Eagle, to walk on the moon. In the 2005 book First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong, Armstrong told Hansen that others have pointed out that he can often be heard dropping the vowels from his speech in his radio transmissions. "It doesn't sound like there was time for the word to be there," Armstrong said in the book. "On the other hand, I didn't intentionally make an inane statement, and . certainly the "a" was intended, because that's the only way the statement makes any sense. "So I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it wasn't said -- although it might actually have been." Roger Launius ), who chairs the space history division at the Air and Space Museum, was among those who heard the experts' presentations this week. "In the overall scheme of world history, it's probably not that significant. But it's nice to know that what he thought he said, he actually did say, and that because of the nature of the electronic and the communications systems of the time, it just did not get through," said Launius, a former NASA historian. NASA spokesman David Mould said he has asked NASA's own audio analysts to review Ford's findings. Ford said he began his detective work two weeks ago after a bicycle ride in Ohio. As he rested, he reflected on a favorite topic from his days as a medical student: the Apollo 11 moon landing. "They just put a man on the moon, why worry about an 'a'? Later, I thought Armstrong was such a good pilot, so precise, it's unlikely he would actually screw up a line." Ford's interest was fueled as well by his work as a Cable News Network anchorman more than two decades ago, when his duties included news coverage of NASA. He used his computer to download the audio recording of Armstrong's words from a NASA Web site and analyzed the speech pattern with the GoldWave software. In the graphic tracing, he found a signature for the missing "a," evidence it was spoken and transmitted. Ford then checked First Man and found Hansen's account of Armstrong's historic step off the lunar lander as well as the astronaut's explanation for the missing word. The account matched what he had found with the GoldWave analysis. Ford contacted Hansen and compiled his findings in the format of a scientific paper. "It was meant for all mankind, and it's important to have it correct," Hansen said of the phrase. "It's a concise, eloquent statement for the ages at a unique milestone for our species."
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