If you make a mistake while doing something on the computer, nothing will happen. Ctrl + Z and the problem is solved. One of the most common along with copy and paste, this shortcut has become a real boon in our daily life. Interestingly, the origin of Ctrl+Z is more common, although the originator of the latter is known.

Blessed ‘Undo’ or ‘Undo’. English term (pronouncedwalked‘) is already a legacy of all kinds of operating systems and applications and has become an almost mandatory option in any modern application, and its blessed shortcut (Ctrl+Z on Windows and Linux, Command+Z on macOS) saves many inconveniences. situations and is one of the most useful and used today.

No one knows who created it.. Larry Tesler, who passed away in 2020, was the creator of the copy and paste functions (Ctrl-C / Ctrl V on Windows and Linux), but the origin of ‘Ctrl-Z’ is somewhat obscure. According to Wikipedia, the first use of this ‘Undo’ feature was in the File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS), a hypertext editor developed by some of his students, such as Andries van Dam and Bob Wallace, at Brown University in 1968. It’s not clear how the idea came about, but from there the proposal was gaining strength.

Xerox PARC enters the scene. Xerox’s renowned research lab wasn’t just the birthplace of the graphical user interface: obsession with usability fueled that concept as well. Xerox PARC’s Bravo editor had such an ‘Undo’ option back in 1974, and in 1976 two IBM engineers said “how great it was to allow users to at least ‘undo’ the immediately previous command (by issuing some special ‘undo’ commands). ‘ command). ‘) It is unknown who made the specific decision, but it was Xerox PARC that assigned the Ctrl-Z shortcut to this command.

Lisa. What happened next is no accident. Larry Tesler, who worked at PARC between 1973 and 1980, giving birth to the concept of the ‘Undo’ function, was one of those present during Steve Jobs’ famous visit in 1979. The ambitious Apple, along with Lisa and another legend (Bill Atkinson), encouraged the integration of the ‘Undo’ command into the operating system.

Undo a thousand times. This initial integration only allowed undo and redo (‘Redo’) once, but multiple levels would come for these commands in the 80s. It was like traveling back in time in your study session and soon became a very popular option.

From UNIX and Amiga to infinity and beyond. The EMACS editor for UNIX systems (it would take several years for Linux to emerge) was one of the first, while CygnusEd was the first to offer multiple levels of ‘undo’ and ‘redo’ for the Amiga. The rest, as they say, is history, and indeed the concept did not stop there and was applied to other areas such as ‘rollback’ or database management with rollback, as well as software version control.

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