Stephen Wilhite, The Creator Of GIFs Has Passed Away Due to COVID-19
He worked on developing GIFs while he was employed at CompuServe in the 1980s.
The man behind the popular GIFs that we all use so much on social media, Stephen Wilhite, has passed away at the age of 74. He died due to complications caused by COVID-19.
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Wilhite worked on developing GIFs while he was employed at CompuServe in the 1980s. Even though GIFs are used almost everywhere on social media, in the 80s they were created to share high-quality high-resolution graphics at a time when internet speeds weren¡¯t as fast as today.
His wife, Kathaleen, in a conversation with The Verge, revealed that he worked on GIF all by himself and that he¡¯d work on it at home and only brought it to work after it was perfected. His process would involve visualising everything in his head, privately and then going ahead and programming it on a computer.
Wilhite was also the one who put to rest the popular conundrum of pronouncing the word ¡®GIF correctly. In a conversation with New York Times in 2013, he revealed that the correct pronunciation is ¡®jiff¡¯ as the G in use is a soft ¡®G¡¯ while also stating that the Oxford dictionary was wrong to accept both the pronunciations.
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He retired in the year 2000 and spent his years travelling with his wife. In his free time, he would like to work on his model train set. He had a dedicated room in the basement that was named the ¡®train room¡¯ and he¡¯d also design the layout and electrical work for it.
Wilhite was awarded a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the modern internet with the GIF.
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