David Bradley, the inventor of the 'ctrl-alt-delete' combo has recently retired after 29 years of service at IBM. He was one of twelve engineers that created the original IBM PC back in 1980. For PC there had to be an emergency procedure that could make the system reboot if the software malfunctioned. Bradley came up with 'Control, Alt and Delete' for a very simple reason; the 'Delete' key was far away from the other two modifiers that, if used correctly, made the PC reboot.

The 'Ctrl, Alt and Delete' combination has lost most of it's agressive effect nowadays, but it's still famous.

You can read this, and an interesting interview with David Bradley at The Register.

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