Bill Gates reveals the secret origin of Ctrl, Alt, Delete

Brad Stephenson

During the Bloomberg business forum, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates provided some background information on the creation of the famous Ctrl, Alt, Delete command which is often used to switch or close programs in Windows.

“The IBM PC hardware keyboard only had one way that it could get a guaranteed interrupt generated,” he says when talking to Bloomberg’s David Rubenstein, revealing that the original plan wasn’t to use the three keys we know today. “So, clearly the people involved, they should have put another key on it to make that work. A lot of machines these days do have that as a more obvious function.”

It’s interesting to hear that this command was more of a compromise than a planned combination of keys. Are you surprised to hear this and would you like to see Ctrl, Alt, Delete replaced with a single button? Do you even use that command anymore? Let us know in the comments below.