When Neil Armstrong made the first human footprint on the moon 40 years ago today, Harriet “Betty” Hughes watched with pride, knowing she had a part in the history-making event.

Hughes, 78, of Longview made printed circuit boards for Celco, an engineering laboratory that had contracts with NASA and the military. She said some of the electronics developed in the California lab were used for the spacecraft’s return flight.

The Cold War-era space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was at its height of drama on July 20, 1969. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy had promised to land a man on the moon before the decade was out. It’s been estimated that more than 500 million people around the world watched the lunar landing.

Seeing it on television was “just unbelievable, amazing, thinking how much brain work and physical work went into all of that,” Hughes said in an interview last week in her studio apartment at Monticello Park.

“I’m looking forward to the 40th anniversary.”

She doesn’t recall the exact equipment her lab manufactured for Apollo 11, but “I do remember them telling us what we were working on. It brought back the moon shot, the landing.”

Born in southeast Missouri, Hughes moved to California in the early 1950, when she was 20 years old, with about 30 other Missouri families. They all were seeking work in the aircraft industry or the orange groves. Her husband, Monty, worked for Sunkist fruit growers. She did electronics work for Marquardt Aircraft and then Celco from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s. After several years in the electronics industry, Hughes worked for the Ontario-Montclair School District for 20 years as a classroom aide and office clerk.

Her husband died in 1995, and she came to Longview in 1998 to be near her daughter, Karen.

She has fond memories of her job at Celco.

“Some of the work was done under a magnifying glass,” she recalled. “I did soldering. I did inspection. I did wiring. My work was good enough and I was sharp enough that I made lead personnel.”

She still has a card certifying that in 1966 she completed Celco’s course in hand soldering for NASA.

“We had to be cleared for little things like that to work on any kind of government project,” she said.

About 20 people worked in the Celco lab, she said.

“We had people pleasant to work with and we had good bosses.”