![escape key](http://uploads.neatorama.com/images/posts/320/53/53320/1349623370-0.jpg)
Life, alas, does not come with an
escape key. But your computer keyboard probably does. Why is it there? Pagan Kennedy of the
New York Times explains that a computer programmer invented it to interrupt processing:
The
key was born in 1960, when an I.B.M. programmer named Bob Bemer was
trying to solve a Tower of Babel problem: computers from different
manufacturers communicated in a variety of codes. Bemer invented the ESC
key as way for programmers to switch from one kind of code to another.
Later on, when computer codes were standardized (an effort in which
Bemer played a leading role), ESC became a kind of “interrupt” button on
the PC — a way to poke the computer and say, “Cut it out.”
Why
“escape”? Bemer could have used another word — say, “interrupt” — but he
opted for “ESC,” a tiny monument to his own angst. Bemer was a worrier.
In the 1970s, he began warning about the Y2K bug, explaining to Richard
Nixon’s advisers the computer disaster that could occur in the year
2000. Today, with our relatively stable computers, few of us need the
panic button. But Bob Frankston, a pioneering programmer, says he still
uses the ESC key. “There’s something nice about having a
get-me-the-hell-out-of-here key.”
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