GIF Inventor Steve Wilhite Receives a Fitting Send-Off After Passing Away at 74

Steve Wilhite.

(Photo Courtesy: Giphy)

Steve Wilhite, who led the team that invented the Graphic Interchange Format or GIF, died last week after contracting COVID-19, his wife Kathaleen Wilhite told National Public Radio. He was 74.

GIF, which is now widely used for reactions, messages, and memes, was reportedly developed by Wilhite and his team while he was working at the software company CompuServe in the 1980s.

He intended it to be a way to distribute high-quality graphics in colour at a time when internet speeds were very slow.

"He invented GIF all by himself – he actually did that at home and brought it into work after he perfected it. He would figure out everything privately in his head and then go to town programming it on the computer."

Kathaleen Wilhite to The Verge

“Even with all his accomplishments, he remained a very humble, kind, and good man,” his obituary said. Even after 35 years, the beloved GIF format remains in regular use on the internet.

A Send-Off With GIFs

After the news of his death broke, the internet fittingly honoured Steve Wilhite with a flood of GIFs. These included what was possibly the first GIF and one of Wilhite's favourite GIFs.

The posts also mentioned the long-standing debate about how the word 'GIF' ought to be pronounced. Wilhite had a very clear stance on this.

"The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft 'G,' pronounced 'jif.' End of story," he had told The New York Times in 2013.

(With inputs from NPR, The New York Times, and The Verge.)