Microsoft founder Bill Gates: Ctrl-Alt-Del could have been done with just ONE button
BILL Gates has admitted that the Ctrl-Alt-Del function for Windows PCs was a mistake and that it could have been done with just a SINGLE button tonight.
The Microsoft co-founder said the three button shortcut, designed originally to re-boot a computer, was an error that stuck throughout the years.
Mr Gates, 57, said he had originally favoured the Ctrl-Alt-Esc combination but later preferred accessing the function at the press of just one button.
The shortcut, used to log onto PCs and shut down programs, was invented by computer engineer David Bradley who worked on the original IBM PC.
Speaking in an interview at Harvard University, Mr Gates said: "We could have had a single button but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button - it was a mistake."
Mr Bradley previously said during IBM's 20th anniversary that he may have invented the function but Mr Gates "made it famous".
The engineer said he had devised the function because it was difficult to press those three keys together accidentally.
Mr Gates added: "We did some very clever things- the IBM PC character set, usually you have 128 characters like the lower case and upper case but we took the upper ones and put like suit symbols in- we were able to experiment with a lot of stuff but more on the software side and not the hardware."