posted 09-30-2006 01:42 AM               

High-tech detective work apparently has found the missing "a" in one of the most famous phrases ever spoken.

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."

posted 09-30-2006 02:12 AM               

Sometimes it takes a while for history to get its facts straight. In this case, thanks to some remarkable new technology, it only took a little over 37 years.

What astronaut Neil Armstrong said when he first stepped out onto the surface of the Moon on July 20th 1969, ranks, without question, as one of the most famous phrases ever uttered. A Google search on the internet today results in no less than 2.2 million hits for Armstrong's phrase. The only phrase that results in more is "To be or not to be," at 2.3 million hits, but that, of course, is a quote from Shakespeare, not a statement spoken as part of an actual, historical event. To put the magnitude of Armstrong's statement in perspective, two of the most famous quotes from American presidents -- Franklin Roosevelt's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" and Jack Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" -- results in less than 200,000 Google hits.

But what exactly is it that Armstrong said? History credits the phrase as "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," but, as Neil Armstrong indicated upon returning to Earth after his Apollo 11 mission, he intended on saying, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." In fact, that's what he thought he did say, though the "a" could not be heard, leading to a fascinating little space-age mystery that no audio or computer technology of the day could resolve. The technical and historical consensus became that Neil, indeed, fully intended to say, "That's one small step for a man," but, in the rush of the moment, forgot to say, or just did not say, the "a."

Naturally, when I interviewed Neil for my 2005 book, "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong", I wanted to hear what he had to say about those first words of his. What he told me was:

"I can't recapture it. For people who have listened to me for hours on the radio communication tapes, they know I left a lot of syllables out. It was not unusual for me to do that. I'm not particularly articulate. Perhaps it was a suppressed sound that didn't get picked up by the voice mike. As I have listened to it, it doesn't sound like there was time for the word to be there. On the other hand, I think that reasonable people will realize that I didn't intentionally make an inane statement, and that 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 actually might have been."

For Armstrong, as well as for historians and the historically-minded, the question of what Neil said or didn't say when he stepped out on the Sea of Tranquility is not petty or insignificant. Over the years, in many published versions of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong has been criticized for leaving out what some have called that "crucial indefinite article" and for "messing up" or "muffing" his immortal phrase. Even those in the mood for forgiving have written that "the cadence of Neil's words on tape suggest that the "a" was forgotten, not lost. A new book on the Moon landings even goes so far as to say that Neil's leaving out the "a" rendered his whole statement "meaningless."

The mystery of the missing "a" has finally been solved. Peter Shann Ford is a sort of Renaissance man. Born and educated in Australia, he began as a print journalist before moving over to Australian television as a reporter and news anchor. He joined CNN in Atlanta in 1981 and for over 10 years covered the U.S. space program for CNN and NBC and its affiliates. He was a news anchor on the team that launched CNN Headline News. Leaving television, he went into Australia's central deserts to research Aboriginal tribal lore, which led to his publishing a novel entitled, "The Keeper of Dreams." In 2000, he returned to U.S. television, covering the Olympics for NBC and, after 9/11, reporting from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But the work that leads him here to us today lies in the field of audio technology and control bionics. As early as 1982, Peter Ford became deeply involved a team of researchers in Atlanta that were pioneering the development of microcomputers for rehabilitation and communication for people with disabilities. He began pursuing the goal of enabling people who could neither move nor speak -- nor, in some cases, see -- to use the newly-emerging microcomputer technology to control communications and electronic devices. Peter invented and wrote a program called "JoyWriter 2," which enabled people with neuromuscular and spinal injuries to replace a computer keyboard with a joystick. He coded in a three-dimensional imaging and robotics language that was developed by legendary programming pioneer Paul Lutus. More recently, Peter invented and developed "NeuroSwitch," a nerve-based communications-and-control system that uses nerve-based signals from areas of the human body that otherwise are too severely disabled to react or communicate. For the past four years, he has been working with world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking; Hawking was, in fact, Peter Ford's primary "Beta tester" when Ford was writing the software for "NeuroSwitch."

Part of the technology that Peter has developed involves analysis of audio data and signals. Fortunately for posterity, when reading "First Man", my Neil Armstrong biography, Peter became interested in the mystery of the missing "a." He got an audio clip from NASA and, conducted a very thorough analysis, which has since been peer-reviewed by a number of experts in both electronic data analysis and the physiology of speech. He then got in touch with me.

Subsequently Peter has authored a remarkable paper entitled, "Electronic Evidence and Physiological Reasoning Identifying the Elusive Vowel "a" in Neil Armstrong's Statement on First Stepping onto the Lunar Surface." In it, Peter concludes that Armstrong did, in fact, say "one small step for a man." More specifically, his conclusion reads:

Astronaut Neil Armstrong's arrival on the Moon followed a distinguished career as a combat pilot, test pilot, commander of Gemini VIII for the first docking in space, and backup commander for Apollo 8. His professionalism, precision, and coolness under pressure were established long before and highlighted when he took control of the lunar landing from the autopilot, flew beyond a hazardous area, and landed Eagle manually. He recalls he formulated the sentence, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" in the LEM in the hours between landing and stepping onto the lunar surface. It is a concise, eloquent statement for the ages at a unique milestone for our species. It seemed highly unlikely that he would utter it incorrectly. This paper proves, with an analysis and results that are independently repeatable, that he did, indeed, say the sentence completely and correctly.

At a private meeting held in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., Peter Ford and I, along with Dr. Roger Launius, head of the space history division at NASM, met with Neil Armstrong about his research discovery. Also at the meeting was Ms. Rano Singh, a biomechanics expert from Georgetown University. In the hour-long meeting, Peter presented all his data and answered many questions. In the end, Neil Armstrong was clearly persuaded by the evidence, as was everyone else that was there. His verbatim comments included:

"I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford's analysis of it and I find the technology interesting and useful. I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word."

Peter Ford will continue refining his data and analysis. His next step will be to analyze the audio track recordings made during the Apollo 11 EVA from the radio telescope dish at Parkes Observatory in Australia.

posted 09-30-2006 03:35 AM               

I'd question the stats about the number of hits on this phrase though.

posted 09-30-2006 10:17 AM               

According to Ford, Armstrong spoke, "One small step for a man ..." in a total of 35 milliseconds, 10 times too fast for the "a" to be audible.

posted 09-30-2006 10:18 AM               

A new book on the Moon landings even goes so far as to say that Neil's leaving out the 'a' rendered his whole statement 'meaningless.'

posted 09-30-2006 10:19 AM               

Imagine this research revealing after years of speculation that Neil Armstrong had actually said:

"That's one small step for the man,one giant ..."

On edit, and seriously, as a professional editor, I was always troubled by the first construction, "one small step for man. . . ."

Neil was not "man" writ large, he was "a man"--specific and individual. This construction ("a man") then allows the speaker to set up the opposing or contrasting construction of "mankind"--universal and collective.

posted 09-30-2006 01:20 PM               

It's so good - actually no, it's so perfect that if I were a moon hoax believer I'd hold it up as one of the principle proofs that the whole thing was stage managed. It's just too good!

posted 09-30-2006 02:38 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by cspg:
And that book would be?

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posted 10-01-2006 08:12 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Per Hansen, Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest

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posted 10-01-2006 08:36 PM               

For the initial discovery, Peter Ford relied on a 259 kilobyte, 24.113 second duration WAV file available for download from NASA's website.

posted 10-03-2006 07:48 AM               

And, honestly, I've always thought that the tone of his voice as he says, "one giant leap for mankind" indicates that he caught his error. It's almost as if he's smiling as he concludes the thought, like he's thinking to himself, "Awww, man ... I messed that one up."

Finally, I think it's interesting to note that Armstrong says he finds Peter Ford's analysis "persuasive." That admits nothing as to whether he actually said "a man". The most crooked people around -- and I'm certainly not including Ford in this category -- are persuasive.

posted 10-03-2006 10:06 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Peter Ford will continue refining his data and analysis. His next step will be to analyze the audio track recordings made during the Apollo 11 EVA from the radio telescope dish at Parkes Observatory in Australia.

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The full spectrum of the radio signal transmitted to the Earth contained both the telemetry and the TV separately. The TV was frequency modulated (FM) on the carrier, and the sub-carriers, which were phase modulated (PM) at several different frequencies, contained the telemetry information, including the audio. So while the majority of the TV of the Moonwalk broadcast to the world was via the 64m Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, the audio downlink broadcast to the world was exclusively via the Goldstone antenna.

Basically, there were three tracking stations receiving the signal simultaneously: Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek, and Parkes. A controller at Mission Control in Houston then selected the TV signal that was broadcast to the world. During the first eight minutes and 51 seconds of the TV broadcast, the source of the TV that was broadcast to the world alternated between the Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek tracking stations. The grainy TV images of Armstrong stepping onto the Moon were sourced from the NASA tracking station at Honeysuckle Creek outside Canberra. At eight minutes and 51 seconds into the broadcast, the TV was finally switched to Parkes. Since the Parkes TV picture quality was superior to the other two stations, NASA remained with Parkes as the source of the TV pictures for the remainder of the over 2.5 hour broadcast. Now, while the TV was through Parkes (and the other stations at the beginning), the audio downlink used for the broadcast was exclusively via the Goldstone station throughout.

Therefore, the audio that Peter Shann Ford used to analyse Armstrong's words were most likely sourced from Goldstone, not Parkes. That is, the TV pictures and the audio were sent separately on the one signal transmitted from the Moon.

posted 10-03-2006 11:11 AM               

Many of us in the midwest use the "uh" sound in sentences. Armstrong has a midwestern style- he could have uttered something that sounded like "That's one small step for "uh man" not the long "ay" you might expect. It would be interesting to see what the linguists say.

posted 10-03-2006 12:23 PM               

My sense is that Americans as a rule have a kind of cultural contempt for discussions about language and what's considered syntactically ~proper~ or powerful. So those of us who do care about the story are probably in a kind of dweeby minority.

posted 10-03-2006 12:52 PM               

After all, the Apollo 13 quote Houston we have a problem was actually Houston we've had a problem.

posted 10-03-2006 12:59 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
I might be in the "who cares" camp on this one. While I find proper grammar to be a good thing, I think the quote works as it was heard. At least, the population understands the meaning of the quote with or without the "a."

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posted 10-03-2006 01:33 PM               

I believed him at the time because if you listen to the complete phrase he says "one ..iant leap for mankind. I do not hear the G.

If you can lose part of the word Giant then you can certainly lose all of a little word like "a".

I heard Al Bean recently talking about his painting of Armstrong's first step. Having been there trying to take a first step in low gravity inside the suit himself, and also having swapped experiences with Armstrong, Bean said for those first few seconds Armstrong was holding on to the ladder whilst looking around and steadying himself while he got used to the gravity.

According to Bean all that about "I'm going to step off the LM now" and describing the surface as fine grained was all to give himself time to get his balance as he did not want to fall over on live TV in front of the entire planet. Wouldn't that have been a triumph?

If Armstrong was doing this I can understand why the mike in his helmet may have heard most but not all of what he said as he moved around inside his suit and turned his head to look around. Added to the static I can understand tiny bits of the message going AWOL.

So ever since I was a kid I thought he said the "A", if only coz the "G" isn't quite all their either.

posted 10-03-2006 08:08 PM               

Presented [here], with permission of its author, is Peter Shann Ford's paper complete with illustrations. He invites those who are inclined to download the same software and audio file that he used to reach his findings and test his conclusions.

posted 10-03-2006 11:03 PM               

As someone who works with digital audio everyday I'd raise a couple of points about the method used by Peter Ford.

Firstly this is a very limited fidelity recording. A CD recording (by no means the highest quality available but sufficiently accurate for most recording needs) has a sample rate of 44.1kHz and a bit depth of 16 bits. The sample rate sets the frequency response of the recording, or to use English, the clarity. Lower sample rates sacrifice the higher frequencies, giving a notably dulled (and potentially distorted) sound. False audio artifacts can be introduced if the sample rate is set at less than twice the highest frequency of the sound recorded.

The internet Armstrong sample is only 11.025kHz, a very limited quality recording unable to accurately reproduce frequencies over 5.5125kHz. Stick your fingers in your ears while hissing (don't try this at work ); this is a very crude illustration of the frequencies you are losing.

Now, clearly the radio transmissions themselves were of quite a limited fequency response, possibly as low as 5kHz, so there may be no frequencies to lose in the source material. Without knowing this for certain though it would seem sensible to seek out a far higher quality digital recording.

The other measure of recording quality, bit depth, may have more impact on Peter's findings though. The bit depth sets the maximum number of digital 'steps' between the loudest peak of a recording and silence. Clearly the more steps the better. To take an absurd example just two steps would give us either silence or full volume, with no possibility to capture swells and fades in volume. So by scaling this idea up, the greater the number of steps the more accurately the digital recording captures the changes in volume of the sound. This is bit depth.

16 bit recordings allow for around 65,000 steps; 8 bit (as used in the Armstrong sample) allow only 256. The main consequence of this is that the sound is, again, less accurate but also compressed. Dynamic compression causes the relative volume of the quieter and louder sounds in a source to be narrowed i.e. the quieter sounds will be become falsely louder than was the case in the original signal.

In the case of recordings from the moon this will bring up the background noise and static.

Phew!

So why does this matter? Because I don't entirely agree with Peter Ford's statement that using a denoising algorithm "...does not change critical voice characteristics" (see figures 5 and 6 of his findings). All noise reduction algorithms have some negative impact on the source recording. Particularly if the recording is of poor quality, with potential false sound artifacts due to a low sample rate, and increased background noise due to a low bit-rate.

posted 10-04-2006 09:52 AM               

I was wondering why we can't hear the original recording with the new evidence from this study.

posted 10-04-2006 10:44 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by spaceheaded:
I used the built-in audio editor that came with the OS/2 system I was using back then; much better than the one that windows 3.1 had.

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