Vale Stephen Wilhite, the creator of the GIF
Stephen Wilhite, the man who invented the wildly popular GIF, has died aged 74.
His wife, Kathleen, broke the news that he died of Covid on March 14.
Wilhite created the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) - an image format with a short, looping video - while working at CompuServe in 1987.
“He invented the GIF all by himself - he actually did that at home and brought it into work after he perfected it,” Kathleen told Verge.
“He would figure out everything privately in his head and then go to town programming it on the computer.”
He was later recognised for his work in 2013 when he was awarded a Webby lifetime achievement.
“I saw the format I wanted in my head and then I started programming,” he told The New York Times that same year, adding that the first image he created was of an airplane.
The first GIF created was of an airplane that seemed to move through clouds. Image: TheFanatic.net
The inventor and programmer also ended the debate on how to pronounce the name of his creation once and for all, saying it used a soft ‘g’ sound, like Jif peanut butter.
“Those using the hard ‘g’, as in ‘got’ or ‘given’ are wrong,” he said. “End of story.”
Kathleen said there was more to her husband than his invention of the GIF, and his love of trains led to him having a room dedicated to them in the basement of their home with “enormous train tracks”.
Even after he retired in 2001, she said “he never stopped programming”.
According to his obituary page, he had 11 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren and “remained a very humble, kind and good man” even with all his accomplishments.
An unknown icon in internet culture
Though Wilhite's name might be unfamiliar to many, his creation certainly isn’t. From an origin as a method of distributing high quality graphics in colour when internet speeds were at a snail’s pace, the GIF has become an useful tool used to communicate in digital spaces.
In linguist Gretchen McCulloch’s book, Because Internet, she describes how GIF’s are used most frequently now as depictions of people, animals or cartoon characters doing a certain action to represent your own body.
Modern-day GIFs are often used to represent us laughing, crying, or gesturing in real life, just like this one in response to one of our memes. Image: Facebook
Whether that’s commenting on a funny image with a GIF of an animal that’s beside itself in invisible laughter or sharing birthday messages with GIFs of cakes covered in flickering candles, most of us can recall a time we relied on these instead of writing or speaking.
She also describes their use as emblems, a linguistic term for nameable gestures like the middle finger, jazz hands, eye rolling, winking, and dropping an invisible microphone, as well as a way to show that we’re actively listening to someone.
Social media platforms have even caught onto how we use GIFs to communicate.
“When you go to insert a GIF on Twitter, the built-in categories of GIF you’re offered are nameable, stylised gestures… such as applause, eww, eye roll, facepalm, fistbump, goodbye, happy dance hearts, high five (and others),” McCulloch writes.
“Certain GIFs are so emblematic that they can be invoked by name, without an image file … when you want to convey your excitement in observing other people’s drama, you can send a GIF of Michael Jackson eating popcorn in a darkened movie theatre, eyes avidly glued to the screen, but you can also simply say #popcorngif or *popcorn.gif*.”
The MJ GIF in question. Image: Giphy.com
With that in mind, Wilhite’s 35-year-old creation will stay popular as long as we continue to interact with others online in a legacy that many aren’t afforded.
Yet Wilhite was more than his creation, and it’s important that we remember his name just as easily as we remember our go-to GIFs.
Image: Getty Images