Stephen Wilhite, one of the creators of the now-infamous Graphics Interchange Format – better known as GIFs – passed away earlier this month at the age of 74. 

What You Need To Know

  • Stephen Wilhite, one of the creators of the now-infamous Graphics Interchange Format – better known as GIFs – passed away on March 14 at the age of 74

  • Wilhite’s wife, Kathaleen, told The Associated Press that her husband passed away due to complications from COVID-19

  • Wilhite in 1987 created the compression algorithm that would be used to create moving images known as GIFs

According to his public obituary, Wilhite passed away on March 14, and was described as a “very humble, kind, and good man.”

Wilhite’s wife, Kathaleen, told The Associated Press that her husband passed away due to complications from COVID-19. 

The invention of the GIF came before the World Wide Web was available to the general public. According to the Smithsonian, Wilhite – who was working at CompuServe at the time – and his team were tasked with a problem: “How could a color image file be shared without taking up too much of the computer’s memory?”

In 1987, Wilhite had solved the issue by creating a compression algorithm and combining it with certain “image parameters like the number of available colors,” per the Smithsonian. Wilhite’s algorithm built off of a previous algorithm dubbed Lempel-Ziv-Welch, which was both patented and more typically used for still images or to create flipbook-like moving photos. 

In the decades since, GIFs have taken the internet by storm, and can be created by virtually anyone with an internet connection. 

Wilhite, who suffered a stroke in 2000, retired the year after. In 2013, he told the New York Times the first colored GIF he made was of an airplane; at the time, Wilhite said he had never created an animated GIF himself. 

“I saw the format I wanted in my head and then I started programming,” Wilhite told the outlet of his creative process. His favorite GIF, he added, was the dancing baby image created in 1996.

Wilhite also attempted to settle (albeit somewhat unsuccessfully) the debate over how to pronounce GIF, telling the Times: “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”

In the two-plus decades since his retirement, Wilhite was an “avid camper,” per his obituary, and enjoyed spending time with his family and the outdoors.

Wilhite, who lived in Milford, Ohio, won a Webby lifetime achievement award in 2013 for inventing the GIF, which decades after its creation became omnipresent in memes and on social media, often used as a cheeky representation of a cultural moment.

“There’s way more to him than inventing GIF,” Kathaleen Wilhite told the Associated Press of her husband, who loved trains, with a room dedicated to them in the basement of their house with “enormous train tracks,” as well as taking camping trips. Still, even after he retired in 2001, “he never stopped programming,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.