Inventor of animated photos commonly named GIFs Stephen Wilhite passed away at 74 years of age.
According to the tech website Endgadget, Stephen passed away due to COVID-19.
Wilhite invented the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) while working at CompuServe, which was initially named ‘JIFs’.
The invention of GIFs allowed users to share photos and videos over slow internet connections, as they were shared at 256 colours per animation.
Stephen’s design allowed the format to store multiple frames, which allowed animations to share without converting them into video format.
The GIFs were made popular when artists and Tumblr users started using them frequently.
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His colleagues from CompuServe, in their obituary messages, described Stephen as a hard worker who had a major influence on the company’s success.
His wife Katheleen said that their visit to the Grand Canyon was their most memorable trip. “I had never seen it before, and he wanted to show it to me,” she said fondly. The couple also went camping “all the time,” she said.
Wilhite, in an interview with the Times, said that his favourite GIFs was the dancing baby meme, which went viral even before the memes and viral were commonly known terms.
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