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January 30, 2004

Final Reboot

ctrlaltdel.jpg

David Bradley, 55, is retiring from IBM today, after 28-1/2 years.

Bradley, a cultural icon among computer history aficionados, will be continuing to teach at North Carolina State University after retirement.

Back in 1980, Bradley was part of the 12-man team working on the IBM PC. Among other tasks, the team needed to figure out a way to restart the computer should something go wrong and it stop responding to other commands. Bradley took on the task and in five minutes programmed the well-known key combination that is his claim to fame: Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

Bradley claims to have every cartoon that features his famous key combination, and he was once a clue on the final round of Jeopardy. On these acheivements, Bradley says, "If I can be a clue in The New York Times' Sunday crossword puzzle, I will have met all my life's goals."

Posted by Sam | Permalink | TrackBack
Comments

I did a few years in Boca with PC Co development in the early 90s. Dr.Dave was certainly an icon.

Posted by Bob at January 30, 2004 12:23 PM
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