Steve Wilhite at his 2013 Webby Award acceptance. (Image credit: Screenshot via YouTube) Steve Wilhite, best known for creating the GIF format in 1987, has passed away at the age of 74. The news was confirmed by Kathaleen, his wife, reported The Verge. Wilhite died due to post Covid-19 complications on March 14, but the news has just become public now.
The GIF format, which incidentally is pronounced JIF and not GIF with a hard g, has become one of the most popular formats for sharing images and memes on the internet. According to a 2012 article on the DailyDot, which looked at the history of the format, Wilhite had said that the first GIF was a picture of a plane. The graphics format was released back in 1987 and the enhanced version of GIF was called 87a.
It allowed “people to create compressed animations using timed delays,” according to the report, a format that soon become the popular mode of replies, memes and jokes on the internet.
According to NPR, Wilhite worked for CompuServe till 2001, and only retired when he had a stroke. But once CompuServe was acquired by AOL in 1998, the GIF patents expired and the format became open to the public domain, according to the DailyDot. It couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time, given this is when the internet would start taking off.
Wilhite won a lifetime achievement award at The Webby Awards in 2013, according to New York Times. He told NYT back in 2013, “I saw the format I wanted in my head and then I started programming.” He had also told the publication that the classic, “dancing baby” from 1996 was his favourite GIF.
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