(staticky chattering)
- [Narrator] It's July 20th, 1969.
Across the country, an estimated 650 million Americans
have tuned in to watch the first men land on the moon.
Also watching is Jo Thompson.
You don't know her name yet
but without Jo and her sister seamstresses,
those men would've never made it to the moon and back again.
- [Neil Armstrong] That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
(playful string quartet music)
(whirring)
- My name is Jo Thompson and back in the '60s,
I sewed on spacesuits for Neil Armstrong,
Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
And we would bury the thread like that.
And see, now it's tucked under.
When I was about 6 or 7
was when my aunt taught me about sewing
so that I was able to make a pretty decent doll dress.
I am proud I was a seamstress,
and I'm glad that what we did was a great success;
but the seamstresses have really gone undocumented.
Right there, that's me.
Without our attention to detail and our dedication,
they would not have been able to do what they did.
- [Narrator] In 1966,
Jo was recruited onto an elite team of seamstresses
by former bra factory ILC Dover.
In the years to come,
she'd help create some of the most complicated technology
of the 20th century.
There were layers of insulation.
The cemented area that held the air when they inflated it,
that was the inner layer.
Then there was an outer layer.
Inside even all of that, he had like a spandex suit
that had tubes running in through it.
Then there was that neck ring that the helmet attached to.
It was quite an engineering marvel. (laughing)
(quiet somber music)
My job required me to do things that were
technical and challenging.
When we cut the items out,
it had to be placed back on a pattern to be accepted
and it was not more than 1/64th of an inch.
The tolerance of 1/64th of an inch is very small.
It's probably not much more than a hair breadth.
If you made a needle hole by stitching wrong somewhere,
when the suit was under pressure, then the suit would leak.
If the suit started leaking air,
there's only one thing could happen
and that would be he wouldn't make it back home.
Fifty years ago is a long time.
I think it was fairly early in the evening.
It was when he got out and stepped on the moon
that I really felt like this is the final test
of what we did.
- [Astronaut] Things are looking great here, Joe.
- [Jo] I had a small black and white TV
with not a whole lot of good reception.
I suppose there was more people there
but to me, I was the only one there,
and I was the only one that was responsible
for this man being on the moon,
holding my breath to make sure he made it back again.
Every time I see the moon,
it reminds me of all the people I worked with
and what we made, and I look up there and I think,
"A man was actually on that moon
"and he actually wore something that I had my hand on."
Can't believe it.
- [Armstrong] The eagle has landed.