Ctrl-Alt-Del Inventor To Retire From IBM (Slashdot)
Dr. David Bradley, leader of the original IBM PC engineering team and creator of the “CTRL-ALT-DEL” interrupt key combo, is retiring from IBM to teach. He didn’t really place much importance to CTRL-ALT-DEL, thinking that only programmers would have any real need to use it. Little did he know that it would become ubiquious (for better or worse) in operating Microsoft products. It’s used for getting out of stuck or “blue screen” situations, logging into a multiple users system, and showing active programs and CPU usage. The technical and historical reasons for the key combo’s versatility are at this web site, but basically it’s the only keypress that can’t be paused or interrupted by something else the computer’s doing (although in practice, I’ve managed some real doozies ).