Microsoft chairman Bill Gates admitted that Ctrl+Alt+Del command was a mistake when he was in a fund raising campaign at Harvard University last week. This command was initially designed to reboot the system.
David Rubenstein, the Harvard fund raising campaign chairman, asked Bill Gates : "Why when I turn on my software or computer do I need to have my three fingers to press control,alt and delete? Whose idea was that?"
The answer given by Bill Gates is : "Basically because when you turn your computer on, you are going to see some screens and eventually type your password in. You want to have something you do with the keyboard that is signalling to a very low level of the software that is hard coded in the hardware that is really bringing your system into a new state instead of just a little funny piece of software that puts up a screen looks like login screen and then listens to your password.We could have a single button but the guy in IBM who did the keyboard design didn't want to give us a single button. So we had to do it in low level in software. It was a mistake."
The first generation IBM PC designer David Bradley invented the Ctrl+Alt+Del command to reboot the system. On the celebration of 20 anniversaries of IBM PC, he mentioned that he might invented this command, but it was Bill Gates who made it famous. Later in an interview, Bradley said he didn't understand why Gates and Microsoft decided to make it a login feature, adding that "I guess it made sense for them."
