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››GIF inventor dies of Covid-19 complications, Twitter responds with torrent of GIF tributes

GIF inventor dies of Covid-19 complications, Twitter responds with torrent of GIF tributes

By Marguerite Burton
March 25, 2022
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GIF creator Steve Wilhite has died aged 74 after contracting Covid-19, NPR reports. According to his wife Kathaleen Wilhite, her husband contracted the virus on March 1 and was subsequently hospitalized, dying on March 14.

Wilhite’s wife told NPR that her husband had a lifelong passion for tinkering with his designs and computer programming, which continued in the weeks leading up to his diagnosis. It was in 1987 when Wilhite developed the “Graphics Interchange Format” (GIF) while working at CompuServe. In a rare interview via Facebook in 2012, he told the Daily Dot, “I think the first GIF was an airplane photo. It was a long time ago.”



GIF was revolutionary in its day, when internet speeds were much slower than they are today. The technology’s compressed format allowed more efficient transfer of images, and an animation feature was added to an updated version. When AOL bought CompuServe in 1998 and let the GIF patent expire, GIFs proliferated in every corner of the Internet – on MySpace pages in the 2000s and Tumblr sites in the 2010s – becoming ubiquitous enough that its even pronunciation is the subject of heated debate, although Wilhite himself has confirmed that it is pronounced “JIF” with a soft “G”.

Wilhite received a lifetime achievement award at the Webby Awards in 2013, and today GIFs continue to play an important role in digital culture.

Related: How do you pronounce GIF? It depends on where you live.

Jason Reed, the Daily Dot’s art director, told NPR via messaging service Signal, “Without the .gif, the internet as we know it would be a different place. It’s a narrow medium that you can learn from. a lot about storytelling, especially tailored to the attention span of the internet.”

In response to Wilhite’s passing, Twitter users flooded the platform with GIF tributes to the man who started it all.

Users graced Wilhite with massive GIF compilations.

Others pointed to the exact pronunciation of “GIF”, citing Wilhite’s Webby acceptance speech.

Although others continued to stir the pot.

Some users have gotten particularly creative with artistic renditions of the beloved programmer.

While others make dazzling montages.

Some admitted that it took Wilhite’s passing to put a name to the inventor behind the technology that had changed so many lives.

And still others called on users to post their favorite GIFs in honor of the creator.

Copyright 2022 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All Rights Reserved

This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com

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