Blogger Posts "I May Have Invented Control-Alt-Delete..." Video Clip

by , 2:45 PM EDT, July 27th, 2005

It may have happened a few years ago during a 20th anniversary gathering to celebrate the creation of the original IBM PC, but the video clip of programmer David Bradley saying "I may have invented Control-Alt-Delete, but Bill Gates made it famous" is now online via the MilkandCookies blog. In the video, Mr. Bradley explains how he came up with the now-infamous key combination and then tosses off the quip, which results in much laughter from all assembled, except Bill Gates. As Mr. Gates sits there with a flat look on his face, Mr. Bradley tries to salvage an awkward situation by explaining that he was referring to the Windows NT logon screen.

Mr. Bradley was a member of the team that created the original IBM PC. He developed the ROM BIOS code and came up with Control-Alt-Delete as a way for developers to soft reboot their computers instead of constantly hard rebooting them. It was originally Control-Alt-Escape, but Mr. Bradley was afraid that the user could accidentally reboot their computer if they bumped the left side of the keyboard. He didn't intend it for use by consumers, but IBM decided to include it in the PC's documentation because the company assumed that the public would also want a way to restart their computers, or switch between applications, without spending the extra time for a hard reboot.