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Undo, the unsung hero!

I was working on a pretty large spreadsheet and made a huge copy paste mistake, virtually  wiping out 4 hours of work.  Then I clicked UNDO and then everything was OK again.

I use that undo button a dozen or more times a day.  This may be the biggest productivity saver of all time.  So I was going to blog my thanks to the inventor of UNDO.  This seemed like a good idea at the time, now 20 minutes later, I still don’t know who that unsung hero might be.

If you are out there, let me know and I will send a tasty treat!  After all, you’ve earned it.

Here’s what I found … The inventor was probably working with Steve Jobs on the Apple Lisa project between 1978 and 1982.

The Edit menu was laid out in a standardized fashion with Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste and Clear (Delete) the command key equivalents were assigned to be the bottom left four keys on the keyboard (Z, X, C, V) and the backspace for delete.

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This entry was written by Sandi Mays and posted on July 9, 2008 at 11:00 am and filed under Just for Fun. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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4 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. Sandi, I got snagit! and you’re right it’s a great tool.
    Also wanted to pass along this site. I use several of these programs and they are great, and free, open source, actively updated by the programming community.

    I use Firefox, Thunderbird, AVG, several others. Have not had a crash or virus related issue for years.

    Check it out: http://techie-buzz.com/collections/35-amazing-softwares-that-are-free.html

    1. Dave on July 16th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

  2. Ori - thank you! That is very interesting.

    2. Sandi Mays on July 14th, 2008 at 10:21 am

  3. Undo was actually available on the Xerox Star workstation , released in 1981. The Lisa, and later the Macintosh were both based (or “inspired”) by work done at Xerox PARC. Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were aware of that work, and given demonstrations of the technology.

    The Xerox Star wasn’t even the first computer with a modern GUI - Xerox built the Alto back in 1973, but never sold it. Some of them were donated to universities, though. I don’t know whether the Alto had an Undo command, though - it’s safe to assume that Undo was introduced somewhere before 1981, in any case.

    3. Ori on July 14th, 2008 at 10:14 am

  4. I’m in absolute full agreement with this one. I can’t quantify how much time undo has saved me. Bravo to the developer!

    5. Michael Wilson on July 9th, 2008 at 5:26 pm

One Trackback

  1. By “The Bear” on Business » Blog Archive » Undo–Sandi Mays’ Unsung Hero on July 13, 2008 at 12:45 am

    […] Mays has a fun-to-read post on her Business Tools Blog site.  I recall the days before Undo was invented. I agree, Undo is the biggest unsung hero — […]

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