{"id":732,"date":"2022-03-28T07:27:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T07:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/?p=732"},"modified":"2022-03-26T21:45:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-26T21:45:31","slug":"inventor-of-gif-stephen-wilhite-compuserve-1987-webby-lifetime-achievement-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/inventor-of-gif-stephen-wilhite-compuserve-1987-webby-lifetime-achievement-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Wilhite (1948-2022) created the gif image file format in 1987, defining an internet culture for decades"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(quote)

\n\nGif inventor Stephen Wilhite \u2018helped shape the modern world\u2019<\/a>
\nIf a picture is worth a thousand words, then a gif is worth millions. The image file format has been a defining element of internet culture for decades, with glass-raising DiCaprios and mic-dropping Obamas facilitating self-expression in a faceless digital world. And we have one man to thank for all the jokes, snark and praise: Stephen Wilhite, inventor of the gif, who died last week, aged 74.

\n\nA lifelong coder, Stephen Wilhite created the gif in 1987 while working at CompuServe. The compressed image files were useful at a time when internet connections dragged. \u201cIf you want lossless, compressed graphics, there is nothing better than gif,\u201d said Sandy Trevor, who managed Wilhite\u2019s team, to the Daily Dot in 2012.

\n\nWilhite \u201cinvented gif all by himself \u2013 he actually did that at home and brought it into work after he perfected it\u201d, said Kathaleen Wilhite to the Verge. \u201cHe would figure out everything privately in his head and then go to town programming it on the computer.\u201d It was his proudest achievement, she said.

\n\nThe same year, an update led to animated graphics. \u201cI think the first gif was a picture of a plane. It was a long time ago,\u201d Stephen Wilhite told the Daily Dot in 2012. Indeed, according to Giphy, the go-to site for gif seekers, it was the image of a plane.

\n\nWilhite worked for Compuserve until 2001, after he had a stroke. Meanwhile, gifs\u2019 popularity took off, including on early social media sites such as MySpace. By 1996, the \u201cdancing baby\u201d image \u2013 one of Wilhite\u2019s favorites, he told the New York Times \u2013 was plastered across the the web and attached to emails. In 2012, \u201cgif\u201d was dubbed word of the year by Oxford American Dictionaries. The next year, the New York Times called the format \u201cthe aesthetic calling card of modern Internet culture\u201d.

\n\nGiphy offered a tribute of its own, hailing \u201cthe simplicity of the format, the power of the looping image. We are indebted to the creativity and vision of Mr Wilhite.\u201d For those who\u2019d like to honor Wilhite\u2019s memory themselves, there are plenty of gifs that pay tribute to their inventor. Perhaps even better, you can heed his unequivocal advice: pronounce it \u201cjif\u201d.

\n\nStephen Wilhite worked on GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, which is now used for reactions, messages, and jokes, while employed at CompuServe in the 1980s.<\/a> He retired around the early 2000s and spent his time traveling, camping, and building model trains in his basement. Although GIFs are synonymous with animated internet memes these days, that wasn\u2019t the reason Wilhite created the format. CompuServe introduced them in the late 1980s as a way to distribute \u201chigh-quality, high-resolution graphics\u201d in color at a time when internet speeds were glacial compared to what they are today.

\n\nStephen Earl Wilhite (March 3, 1948 \u2013 March 14, 2022)<\/a> was an American computer scientist who worked at CompuServe and was the Engineering Lead on the team that adapted the GIF image file format from the earlier Unisys-owned LZW algorithm. GIF went on to become the de facto standard for 8-bit color images on the Internet until PNG became a viable alternative. Known as the inventor or creator of the GIF, he received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.
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\n\nImage courtesy The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(quote) Gif inventor Stephen Wilhite \u2018helped shape the modern world\u2019 If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a gif is worth millions. The image file format has been a defining element of internet culture for decades, with glass-raising DiCaprios and mic-dropping Obamas facilitating self-expression in a faceless digitalRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,11],"tags":[98,61,36,26,27,25,40,18,35,52,41],"class_list":["entry","author-wcp-scientific-mind","post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-figures-and-facts","category-life-nature-society","category-science-and-technology","tag-computers","tag-cyberculture","tag-events","tag-facts","tag-figures","tag-history","tag-internet","tag-life","tag-news","tag-people","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}