What was important was that this was a terrific system. People would talk about it for a long time. And because there was nothing quite like it, the profits would be most appealing. While Charlie realized that his earnings wouldn't put him quite in a class with people like Bill Gates, he would be very comfortable. Very.

He had already issued several public announcements about his achievement. All that was needed right now were just some routine final tests.

Some problems came up. Though he knew that test equipment cannot always be fully trusted, and had sometimes indicated false fails for systems that were fully in spec, and though he had full confidence in his system design, he began to suffer a degree of trepidation.

He went through the test procedures again, very carefully this time. Again, "System Failure." Very methodically now, he started testing individual modules in the system and encountered some tricky readings. He could not be sure that a problem-if there was a problem-was related to hardware or software. He kept hoping that the problem lay in the test gear, not in the system, because the system was very complex and tracking down system faults would be difficult, costly and very time-consuming.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much time left. What to do?

Suddenly an epiphany. He'd been reading about still another failure in tests of the nation's anti-missile defense system. Some senators advocated more stringent testing to check the system's ability to catch decoys and other countermeasures an enemy might employ to foil the system.

But the Senate rejected the idea of tougher testing. And that was Charlie's inspiration.

He eliminated the tests that showed faults. He then announced that the system had successfully passed all relevant tests.