Ever since 1969 I have been silently convinced that the whole world was wrong about a certain historical event and that I was right. I could never prove it, of course, and besides it wasn't a big deal, but it was always an irritant for me whenever I heard the mistake repeated.
When Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the moon's surface and uttered his famous words, quickly engraved in stone by, I think, Walter Cronkite, as "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," I recall saying to my future wife, who was with me at the time, "That's not what he said. That doesn't even make sense. It's like saying 'One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind. What he said was one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Subsequently, every time I heard the apocryphal rendering repeated, I cringed, just as I cringe when someone says "I could care less" when what they mean to say is "I could not care less".
Anyway, now, after all these years, I have been vindicated, and I want to tell the world:
HOUSTON (Sept. 30) - That's one small word for astronaut Neil Armstrong, one giant revision for grammar sticklers everywhere.
An Australian computer programmer says he found the missing "a" from Armstrong's famous first words from the moon in 1969, when the world heard the phrase, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The story was reported in Saturday's editions of the Houston Chronicle.
Some historians and critics have dogged Armstrong for not saying the more dramatic and grammatically correct, "One small step for a man ..." in the version he transmitted to NASA's Mission Control. Without the missing "a," Armstrong essentially said, "One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind."
The famous astronaut has maintained he intended to say it properly and believes he did. Thanks to some high-tech sound-editing software, computer programmer Peter Shann Ford might have proved Armstrong right.
Ford said he downloaded the audio recording of Armstrong's words from a NASA Web site and analyzed the statement with software that allows disabled people to communicate through computers using their nerve impulses.
In a graphical representation of the famous phrase, Ford said he found evidence that the missing "a" was spoken and transmitted to NASA.
"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. "I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word."
See? I knew it.