One small word - Neil Armstrong's grammar vindicated.

[greyl]

...
Mr Armstrong has long insisted that he meant to say “one small step for a man . . .” — which would have been a more meaningful and grammatically correct version, free of tautology. But even the astronaut himself could not be sure.

“Damn, I really did it. I blew the first words on the Moon, didn’t I?” he is reported to have asked officials later, amid uncertainty as to whether he had blown the moment or simply been drowned out by static interference as his words were relayed 250,000 miles back to Earth.

Now, after almost four decades, the spaceman has been vindicated. Using high-tech sound analysis techniques, an Australian computer expert has rediscovered the missing “a” in Mr Armstrong’s famous quote. Peter Shann Ford ran the Nasa recording through sound-editing software and clearly picked up an acoustic wave from the word “a”, finding that Mr Armstrong spoke it at a rate of 35 milliseconds — ten times too fast for it to be audible.

Mr Ford’s findings have been presented to Nasa officials in Washington and to a relieved Mr Armstrong, who issued a statement saying: “I find the technology interesting and useful. I also find his conclusion persuasive.”
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more

[Eric J in MN]

1. I'm skeptical that we can't hear the word "a" and there is no break

...for silence, but somehow the software can prove it's there.

Who says "a" ten times too fast for it to be audible?

[rockymountaindem]

2. Ask George Lucas

Everyone knows the so-called moon landing was just a practice run for Star Wars, right?

:sarcasm: so nobody thinks I'm a moonbat (ba-dum-pishhhh).

[merwin]

4. The recording device could have screwed up. It was analog after all.

[kestrel91316]

5. I heard the original transmission back then, and clearly recall

the slight gap between "for" and "man" that seemed to be missing a sound. It WAS in there, and now we know without a doubt.

[greyl]

6. I took a close look/listen to the recording

and there is a soft syllable between "for" and "man". If the sound is time stretched a few hundred percent or more, the "a" becomes more clear.
This(66.0 KB) is "for a man" stretched just a little,

and this(665 KB) is stretched a lot.

[Up2Late]

7. That second one sounds like whale calls...

...I think the first one was clear enough.

[greyl]

8. Heheh, cool huh? :) Whales.

In the second one, the "a" isn't audible as an "a", but the rhythm - the extra pulse of the "a" - becomes more apparent, I think.

[Igel]

10. I'll side with this site:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003630.html

I looked at the formants in your wav file. There's no there. No formant structure. Just sound. Praat (phonetics software) shows some pulses there, but no real structure. They may be an artifact from the recording technology used or from transmission--there's a hiss superimposed on the speech signal, with clear high pitched bursts above the frequencies used for human speech that correspond to an intensified spectrum at lower frequencies.

It would be interesting to look at the entirety of the phrase "One small step ... mankind."

[greyl]

11. They say he may have said "a", but didn't enunciate distinctly.

They offer several caveats:

Armstrong may or may not have produced the remnants of an "a," in the form e.g. of slight constriction at the back of his throat.

Armstrong did not produce the sort of canonical "a" he would probably have intended for broadcast back to planet Earth...

Note also one other caveat: conceivably the "for" could have just run into the "a", so that what's left of the intended "a" is in fact before the interval I have marked as being under question. This would mean that Armstrong did indeed produce an "a," but not in such a way that it could be distinguished by a hearer. A phonetician might look for evidence for or against this, but I'll just leave it, since even if true, it would certainly mean that Armstrong did not produce what he intended, i.e. something that could actually be distinguished from "for man."

You agree with that? ;)
I'm not arguing that it's plain as day and that he used the Queens english. That's the reason why analysing it with software is necessary.

I can't imagine why they say "the space between "for" and "man" is as near as dammit identical to the space between "for" and "mankind", because there's a clear difference:


If you make a seamless loop out of the questioned "a" section of the recording, it results in an uh or ah sound. The corresponding space between the "for" and "man" in "for mankind" is the nondescript noise present throughout the recording.

[MissMarple]

3. I saw that.

It certainly makes sense.

[Spearman87]

9. Vindicated his grammer but ruined the poetic flow

...of the phrase, IMO.

I loved the original--apparently faulty--transcription. The symmetry seems better between "For Man" and "For Mankind"

[Billy Ruffian]

12. Isn't there a missing tape from the Apollo 11 mission?

The one where Armstrong signs off with "Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky" :evilgrin:

[Billy Ruffian]

14. Rats

Nobody picked up on that teaser.

From Snopes

and Urban Legends

(but that story isn't as good as my explanation of why skydivers go up when they open their parachutes)

[IDemo]

13. Now, what about the "one -iant leap for mankind"? n/t