He’s reprogramming his career
The guy who invented control-alt-delete for IBM has just control-alt-deleted his own job. Dave Bradley, who devised the three-key maneuver while helping design the company’s first personal computer, retired Friday.
But his legacy continues. In addition to restarting frozen computers, control-alt-delete has inspired plays, cartoons and a clue on the game show “Jeopardy” that mentioned Bradley’s name. “I didn’t know it was going to become such a cultural icon,” Bradley says of the 1981 invention. “There’s even a line of furniture called Control-Alt-Delete.”
Bradley, 55, joined IBM nearly three decades ago as an electrical engineer at the company’s Boca Raton, Fla., office. In 1980, he and 11 colleagues began designing the firm’s inaugural personal computer. Their original prototype “looked like a high school science-fair project gone bad,” he says. “It was just wires everywhere.”
As the engineers tested new software, the system sometimes locked up. The only solution was to turn the computer’s power off, wait a few seconds, then turn it back on, a time-consuming process. “I figured we could arrange a shortcut,” Bradley says.
Thus was born control-alt-delete, which bypassed the computer’s self-test when the machine rebooted. Bradley says he chose the keys because they were far enough apart on the original keyboard that users would be unlikely to hit them all at once accidentally.
But the function wasn’t originally intended for consumer use. It was just a way to help IBM’s design team, he explains. Then Microsoft started using control-alt-delete as an escape from software crashes.
“I invented it, but Bill [Gates] made it famous,” Bradley quips.
So, what will Bradley do after leaving IBM? For starters, he doesn’t consider his departure a retirement. “It’s a reboot,” he says. “I’m moving on to something different.”
He plans to teach at North Carolina State University, where he has been moonlighting as an adjunct professor. And he hopes to travel extensively.
Bradley, who lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., says he’s too young to start shopping for a tombstone, but he admits that friends have already suggested an epitaph: “He didn’t die. God just hit control-alt-delete.”
