We owe so much to Stephen Wilhite.
one of the most emblematic figures on the Internet, Stephen Wilhite, creator of the looping animated image format and better known as GIF, passed away on March 3 due to Covid-19 and after serving 74 years. The news was confirmed by his wife Kathaleen.
According to the site The Verge, Wilhite’s wife commented that he was surrounded by all his relatives when the death occurred, while his obituary page recognized him as one of the men with great achievements, as well as someone humble and kind.“He invented the GIF himself; he actually made it at home and took it to work after he perfected it. He would figure everything out privately in his head and then go into town to program it into the computer,” Wilhite’s wife, Kathaleen, said.
Stephen Wilhite began his career at Compuserve, one of the first large commercial providers of online services, but it was not until 1987 that he created the graphics interchange format, better known as GIF, for the purpose of compressing images.
But that’s not all, looking for a way to deliver high-quality, high-resolution graphics in color, at a time when Internet speeds weren’t as fast by comparison today.
The GIF format is undoubtedly one of the main ways to show emotions and even share memes on social networks, but over the years there has been a debate about how the format should be pronounced, so in 2013, Wilhite clarified that it is pronounced with a soft G and even compared it to a famous peanut butter mara. Its pronunciation is “GIF”, but some still mention it with a strong letter G.
Stephen Wilhite had been retired since the early 2000s, at which time he started camping and traveling. Rest in peace.
Amelia Warner
Amelia Warner writes all the Latest Articles. She mostly covers Entertainment topics, but at times loves to write about movie reviews as well.
