Ctrl+Alt+Del was an error, admits Bill Gates

If this computer shortcut had a real-life alter ego, it would probably be a knight in shining armour.

But the Control-Alt-Delete function was a mistake, Bill Gates has revealed.

The ‘three-fingered salute’ is hailed a life-saver when a PC crashes in the middle of something important.

Yet the Microsoft founder said the same function could have been achieved by users hitting one button on their keyboard instead of three.

‘We could have had a single button but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn’t wanna give us our single button,’ he said.

Ctrl+Alt+Del now has a variety of uses – even in Windows 8 – but it was originally meant to serve as a ‘wake up’ call for the computer.

Mr Gates was quizzed about the quirk during a talk at Harvard University in the US, the same institution he dropped out of to start Microsoft.

Many years later, the billionaire was awarded an honorary degree by it.

It has been known in tech circles that IBM designer David Bradley came up with the plan to use three keys for the command but this is the first time that Gates admitted it was unnecessary.

Mr Bradley, speaking at IBM’s 20th anniversary in 2009, said: ‘I may have invented it but Bill made it famous.’

Adapted from The Metro