Forty years ago Monday, astronaut Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” when he became the first person to set foot on the moon.

But before he took that step, Armstrong had to travel about 240,000 miles to get to the moon, a journey that was made possible in part by equipment manufactured in Bartlett.

Flexonics, a company that makes fabricated metal components, designed and built several parts for the Saturn V rocket, which carried the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the moon.

Liquid oxygen lines, gaseous oxygen lines, elbows, drain lines, vent lines and other parts were manufactured at the Bartlett and Elgin factories of the company, now know as Senior Flexonics.

The Bartlett History Museum has opened a special exhibit, “A Giant Step in History, Leap Back in Time to 1969,” to examine the company’s role in the space program.

The exhibit uses photographs, artifacts and Flexonics company newsletters to tell the story.

When the company came to Bartlett in the early 1960s with the promise of 900 new jobs, it was big news for the town of about 1,500 residents, museum director Pam Rohleder said.

“For Bartlett at the time, it was really quite a big deal to have the company come in, because the village was so small,” said Rohleder, who remembers watching the grainy television footage of the lunar landing as a young teenager. “This was a pivotal point in Bartlett history.”

Renowned German rocket scientist Werhner von Braun, who helped lead NASA’s Saturn rocket program, once paid a visit to the facility, Rohleder said.

Today Senior Flexonics is the second largest employer in the village, following School District U-46.

Carol Roche, who works in the company’s human-resources department, helped Rohleder gather information for the exhibit.

She said the company now employees about 450 people at its Bartlett facility, 300 E. Devon Ave.

While some divisions of the company are still working on aerospace-related products, they are not manufactured here, she said.