One Small Step For A Blog

Those of us who actually heard Neil Armstrong’s greeting from the moon live heard him say “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Over the subsequent 37 years, we have also heard him say he intended to begin his statement with “one small step for a man,” and that he thought he actually did say it that way.



I accepted that we probably just didn’t hear the “a” because of the static and other characteristics associated with sending voice transmissions across 239,000 miles on 1969 technology.

Now somebody with 2006 technology has discovered that the “a” is really there!

Why is this news? The audio editing software I use every day probably could have found the missing word.

Newspapers, magazines and web sites all made a big deal of this. The NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams played it like a near-equal to their lead stories: the deadly shooting spree at an Amish school in Pennsylvania and the porn-emailing Congressman.

One small misstep for technology led to one giant leap for filling time on a relatively slow news day.