One of the earliest implementations was by Friendlyware,[2] a suite of entertainment and general interest programs written in BASIC and sold with the original IBM AT and XT computers from 1982 to 1985.
The nominal purpose of the boss key is to make it appear to superiors and coworkers that employees are doing their job when they are actually playing games or using the Internet for non work-related tasks.
[5] Wes Cherry, the author of the original Microsoft Solitaire, had included a boss key to display a fake spreadsheet or random C code,[6] but was asked by his superiors to remove this on release.
Infocom's adult-themed Leather Goddesses of Phobos (only the IBM PC version) had a boss key which would hide the game and show a screen designed to look like a Cornerstone database view.
Upon closer inspection, however, the screen was not exactly boss safe, being populated with order info on rather ridiculous adult items, including an "inflatable milkman".
In 1993, Microsoft introduced a five-pack collection of games whose boss button was the ESC key, positioned in the upper left corner of the keyboard.