FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

David J. Bradley (born 4 January 1949) is one of the twelve engineers who worked on the original IBM PC, developing the computer’s ROM BIOS code. Bradley is credited for implementing the “Control-Alt-Delete” (Ctrl-Alt-Del) key combination that was used to reboot the computer. Bradley joined IBM in 1975 after earning his doctorate in electrical engineering from Purdue University with a dissertation on computer architectures.  

EDUCATION

Bachelors, Electrical Engineering, University of Dayton (Ohio), 1971. Master of Science, Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, 1972. PhD, Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, 1975.

CONTROL-ALT-DELETE

According to Bradley, Control-Alt-Delete was not intended to be used by end users, originally—it was meant to be used by people writing programs or documentation, so that they could reboot their computers without powering them down. This was useful since after a computer was powered down, it was necessary to wait a few seconds before powering it up again to avoid potential damage to the power supply and hard drive. Since software developers and technical writers would need to restart a computer many times, this key combination was a big time-saver. David Bradley and Mel Hallerman chose this key combination because it is practically impossible to accidentally press this combination of keys on a standard original IBM PC keyboard.

However, the key combination was described in IBM’s technical reference documentation and thereby revealed to the general public.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Question of the Day

A math book I was reading said that the Fibonacci sequence is applicable to certain things in nature. There was a picture of a pinecone in the book. Do pinecones have anything to do with Fibonacci numbers?

The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.) in which each term, after the second term, is the sum of the preceding two terms. In the study of botany, these numbers have proved useful in describing the positioning of leaves around plant stems, the spiral patterns in sunflower heads, and the scales of pinecones, to name but a few examples.

Advice of the Day

Horsepower was a wonderful thing when only horses had it.

Home Hint of the Day

Melt down your leftover candle stubs and dip pinecones in the wax. They make great fire starters for the fireplace or wood stove and also look nice piled up in a box or basket.

Word of the Day

Dew

Droplets of water which have condensed on objects, such as plants, which have cooled below the dewpoint temperature of the air.

Puzzle of the Day

If all the letters of the alphabet were asked out to dinner, why could they not all go together?

Because six always go after tea (T).

Died

• Betsy Ross (American seamstress and upholsterer) – 1836
• Orville Wright (American aviator ) – 1948
• Mahatma Gandhi (Indian spiritual and political leader) – 1948
• John Bardeen (physicist) – 1991
• Pierre Boulle (author) – 1994
• Coretta Scott King (civil rights activist; widow of Martin Luther King Jr.) – 2006
• Wendy Wasserstein (Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwright) – 2006
• Sidney Sheldon (author & producer) – 2007

Born

• Walter J. Damrosch (composer) – 1862
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (32nd U.S. president) – 1882
• David Wayne (actor) – 1914
• Dick Martin (comedian) – 1923
• Dorothy Malone (actress) – 1925
• Gene Hackman (actor) – 1931
• Vanessa Redgrave (actress) – 1937
• Boris Spassky (chessmaster) – 1937
• Dick Cheney (former secretary of defense and U.S. vice president) – 1941
• Marty Balin (singer) – 1943
• Lynn Harrell (cellist) – 1944
• Phil Collins (musician) – 1951
• Christian Bale (actor) – 1974

Events

• Funds were approved to purchase Thomas Jefferson’s library in order to rebuild the Library of Congress, which had been destroyed by the British during the War of 1812– 1815
• Yerba Buena, a U.S. town of 200 people, was renamed San Francisco– 1847
• Great Britain and Japan signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance– 1902
• The Original Dixieland Jazz Band released Darktown Strutters’ Ball, the first commercial jazz recording– 1917
• Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany– 1933
• The Lone Ranger made its radio debut– 1933
• Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated– 1948
• 30 millionth customer added to U.S. electrical utilities– 1954
• President Kennedy and Aleksei I. Adzhubei, editor of Izvestia, principal Russian newspaper, held conversations at the White House– 1962
• The Beatles gave their last public performance on the roof of their Apple Corps headquarters– 1969
• Pakistan became independent of Great Britain– 1972
• 31-lb. 12-oz. bluefish caught, Hatteras, North Carolina– 1972
• Andrew Young was sworn in as the first African American ambassador to the United Nations– 1977
• David Bradley, the man who wrote the computer code CtrlAltDelete (forces computers to restart when they will no longer follow other commands), retired from IBM after 28.5 years with the company– 2004
• A buffalo escaped from an auction in South Dakota and ended up in a Grand Rapids department store dressing room where it spent a couple of hours staring into a mirror– 2005

Weather

• Two-day storm brought Birmingham, Alabama 11 inches of snow– 1936
• Great Buffalo Blizzard abated after 3 days: 75 mph winds caused whiteouts and huge drifts that paralyzed the city– 1977
• An avalanche shut down a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway along the B.C.-Alberta border– 2006
• In northern Ohio, a train traveling in high winds derailed on a bridge over Sandusky Bay, sending several freight cars into the water– 2008

COURTESY www.almanac.com