This past week, we lost computer scientist Steve Wilhite. Some of you may not be familiar with this particular ‘Steve’ of the tech world, but there’s a great chance you’ve used his creation – the GIF.
GIF, which stands for Graphics Interchange Format, was created in 1987 at CompuServe by a team led by Steve. The compressed file format allowed slower connections in the 1980s to transfer images more efficiently. Since then, we’ve seen the GIF blow up on MySpace, Tumblr, and Facebook. In 2013, Steve accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Webbys, where he clarified that GIF is pronounced: “jif.”
I really can’t tell you my favorite GIF of all time (I’ve got too many), but here is the most used GIF of 2021:
Thanks, Steve, for your important contribution!