Stephen Wilhite, American computer scientist best known for being the creator of the GIF, died on March 14 at the age of 74, although the news of his death did not spread globally until a couple of days ago. Wilhite, would have died, as it has been revealed, due to some complication derived from a covid-19 infection.
Of course, once the sad news was known, the networks were soon filled with GIFs as a tribute to its creator when he worked at CompuServe back in the mid-eighties of the last century. From then until now many things have changed, including the very purpose and representation of its popular creature, the GIF.
And it is that the GIF was not born with the form and background by which this image format is currently known. Its development took place a few years later than the JPG, in 1987, with the aim of finding an alternative for more specific uses than providing the World Wide Web with visual content at the time.
In fact, the GIF (Graphic Interchange Format or “Graphics Interchange Format”) began its journey for the same purpose as JPG, but with an outstanding particularity for the time: to offer an image format without loss of quality with up to 256 colors, ideal to take the place of simple icons and graphics, but richer in form and Colour.
Does it ring a bell? It was one of the most popular GIFs at the time and one of Stephen Wilhite’s favorites
It should be remembered that the ICO format for icons developed by Microsoft for Windows did not support all 16 colors until the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990, which is said soon. Be that as it may, GIF did not emerge with the capacity that made it popular, the animations, implemented later in the format and the reason why they are still so current today.
«I think the first GIF was an image of an airplane. It was a long time agoWilhite told years ago in an interview that can still be read on Facebook.
«He invented the GIF himself; in fact, he made it at home and took it to work after perfecting it«, His wife recalled in recent statements collected by The Verge. «He did it all in his head and then programmed it on the computer«, he added.
Wilhite retired with the 20th century after suffering a stroke. In 2013 he was awarded the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to computing, an event in which he took the opportunity to reveal the pronunciation of the blessed word: «GIF is pronounced with a soft ‘ge’, similar to ‘jif’ (or ‘yif’)». Despite this, Spanish speakers will continue to call it as always, ‘gif’ as it sounds.
The creator is gone, but the creation remains, it seems, in no hurry to disappear. What less than to recognize Wilhite’s merit, as well as thank him for his work. Goodbye, teacher!
