Check out the simple, fascinating origin story of Ctrl+Alt+Delete

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Here's how what is perhaps the most iconic key combination in computing history got its start.

Ctrl+Alt+Delete. It's the one key combination that practically everyone, including your tech-challenged family members, knows as the go-to for getting out of sticky situations with an unresponsive PC.

But how did that specific combinations come to be?

The story starts with an IBM engineer in 1980, on a quest to solve the problem of how to quickly reset the IBM PC he was working on without having to go through a lengthy system reset.

YouTube channel "Great Big Story" has a great video that covers the whole story with the engineer that created the iconic key combination, Dr. Dave Bradley, and you can get the full scoop above.

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Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl.