<i>And yet, few of these consumers were aware of Bradley’s shortcut quietly lingering in their machines. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, when Microsoft’s Windows took off, that the shortcut came to prominence.</i><p>In an indirect sense it came to prominence in the 1980s, but via Apple. Apple borrowed the CTRL + ALT + DEL soft-reset idea by adding a CTRL + OPEN APPLE + RESET soft-reset functionality to the IIe (the 1983 upgrade of the Apple II series). That became fairly well-known, even (or perhaps especially) among schoolkids.