David Bradley

The name probably doesn't ring a bell but one of his contributions to the IBM PC will. He is the inventor of -- and wrote the code for -- the most famous combination of keys on any PC: control-alt-delete.

The engineers knew they had to design a simple way to restart the computer should it fail. Bradley wrote the code to make it work.

"I didn't know it was going to be a cultural icon," Bradley said. "I did a lot of other things than CtrlAltDelete, but I'm famous for that one."

He's retiring today (Friday) from IBM. Once on a panel with Bill Gates, he was asked if he really was the inventor of CntrlAltDelete. He claimed credit for that, but added, "I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous." Bill didn't laugh.