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The Impossible Dream


Steel2Velvet

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Bill Gates had a vision as a teenager that every business and household should have a computer. The realization of Bill Gates' vision has changed the world. When Gates and best friend Paul Allen were still in Lakeside High School, they dreamed of starting a computer company that would use the same Intel microprocessor as the Altair, a put-together kit featured on a Popular Science Magazine cover in 1973. Gates, Allen and their friend, Paul Gilbert, a wiring wizard, built their own machine at Lakeside to simulate the Altair, using Intel's 8008 1k microprocessor chips. Gates contacted the Altar Company and proposed to write some BASIC coded software for the kit computer. None of the team members had ever seen the Altair machine or the Intel processor. One mistake would cause the software not to run. Working day and night, learning as they went, the team labored in BASIC to create workable software. Eventually at Altar corporate locale in Albuquerque, Paul Allen loaded the team's code onto the Altair computer. On the second try, the system booted and worked as planned. In April, 1975, Gates and Allen founded the Microsoft Corporation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Microsoft would sell its BASIC system to Altair, NCR and Intel. It was much cheaper for these companies to buy Microsoft's software than to write their own. Gates and Allen hired Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, both high school friends, to help with Microsoft's expansion which has yet to subside.

The Impossible Dream

music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion

To dream the impossible dream

To fight the unbeatable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrow

To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong

To love pure and chaste from afar

To try when your arms are too weary

To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest

To follow that star

No matter how hopeless

No matter how far

To fight for the right

Without question or pause

To be willing to march into Hell

For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true

To this glorious quest

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm

When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this

That one man, scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable star

....

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