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Bradley did not intend Control-Alt-Delete to be used by end users — it was meant to be used by people were writing programs or documentation, so that they could reboot their computers without powering them down. This was useful since after a computer was powered down, it was necessary to wait a few seconds before powering it up again if one wanted to avoid damaging the hardware. Since software developers and technical writers would need to restart a computer many times, this key combination was a big time saver. He used this key combination because it is virtually impossible to press these keys on a standard keyboard by accident.
This key combination still exists in the Microsoft Windows operating system to either give a list of running programs (in the case of Windows 95, Windows 98), or to give a list of administative functions, such as to reboot the computer, give a task list, or password protect the computer (in the case of Windows 2000 and Windows XP). It is used for these functions because it is the one key combination the PC architecture cannot ignore.
Bradley is the author of Assembly Language Programming for the IBM Personal Computer (Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0130491713, January 1984), also released in French as Assembleur sur IBM PC (Dunod, ISBN 2225806950).
On January 30, 2004, Bradley retired from IBM after working with them for 28 and a half years.
"I may have invented control-alt-delete, but Bill Gates made it really famous." — at a gathering at the twentieth anniversary of the IBM PC, whilst sitting next to Bill Gates. [1]
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