Ctrl+alt+del was a mistake: Bill Gates

Microsoft's co-founder has described the three-button shortcut needed to log on to the PC as a mistake.

At a fundraising event at Harvard University, Mr. Gates said IBM had made the decision against his wishes and that he had wanted a single button.

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The command was created by David Bradley, an IBM engineer. The original shortcut, Ctrl+Alt+Esc, was binned after he found it was too easy to reboot the computer accidentally. Ctrl+Alt+Del was chosen because it is impossible to press with a single hand.

Mr. Bradley has become famous for the invention, with fans asking him to autograph keyboards at programming conferences.

Also known as the "three-finger salute", it became popular in the early 1990s as a fix for the notorious "blue screen of death".

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"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," Mr. Gates said.

He said the shortcut was intended as a security measure to prevent outside applications from faking the login prompt and stealing passwords.

While it is no longer required to log in to Windows 8, it is still used to lock the computer or call up the task manager.

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