The ability to undo an operation on a computer was independently invented multiple times, as a response to how people used computers.
The File Retrieval and Editing System, developed starting in 1968 at Brown University, is reported to be the first computer-based system to have had an "undo" feature.
Warren Teitelman developed a Programmer's Assistant as part of BBN-LISP with an Undo function, by 1971.
The Xerox PARC Bravo text editor had an Undo command in 1974.
Behavioral Issues in the Use of Interactive Systems, a 1976 research report by Lance A. Miller and John C. Thomas of IBM, noted that "It would be quite useful to permit users to 'take back' at least the immediately preceding command (by issuing some special 'undo' command)."
The programmers at the Xerox PARC research center assigned the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Z to the undo command, which became a crucial feature of text editors and word processors in the personal computer era.
In 1980, Larry Tesler of Xerox PARC began working at Apple Computer. There, he and Bill Atkinson advocated for the presence of the undo command as a standard fixture on the Apple Lisa. Atkinson was able to convince the individual developers of the Lisa's application software to include a single level of undo and redo, but was unsuccessful in lobbying for multiple levels.
Multi-level undo commands were introduced in the 1980s, allowing the users to take back a series of actions, not just the most recent one.
EMACS and other timeshared screen editors had it before personal computer software. CygnusEd was the first Amiga text editor with an unlimited undo/redo feature. AtariWriter, a word-processing application introduced in 1982, featured undo. NewWord, another word-processing program released by NewStar in 1984, had an unerase command.
IBM's VisiWord also had an undelete command.