Stephen E. Wilhite – creator of the Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF – passed away March 14 at 74 years old. His wife confirmed that he died from complications related to COVID-19.
An Ohio resident, Wilhite also served as the chief architect of America Online in addition to creating the GIF, a file format used to share digital images. In 2013, he was honored with a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award.
“He was probably one of the kindest, humble men you’ve ever met,” said his wife, Kathaleen Wilhite, who confirmed his passing to NPR.
According to a blog post in The New York Times, Wilhite was working at CompuServe when he created the GIF. He knew the company wanted to display things like color weather maps, and decided to apply his knowledge of compression technologies to the problem.
“I saw the format I wanted in my head and then I started programming,” he said in an e-mail. The first GIF prototype took around a month to create and was released in June 1987. According to Wilhite, GIF is not pronounced “gif,” but rather “jif” like Jiffy peanut butter.
“A triumph of speed and compression, the GIF was able to move as fast as Internet culture itself, and has today become the ultimate meme-maker,” said The New York Times blog post.
Today, most people are probably familiar with animated GIFs. Wilhite never actually animated a GIF himself. His favorite animated GIF is the “dancing baby,” that went viral in the 1990s.
Since then, animated GIFs can be found all over the internet, from Tumblr posts and Slack messages to coworkers to official social media accounts.
“Without the .gif, the internet as we know it would be a different place,” Jason Reed, the art director at the Daily Dot, told NPR over the Signal messaging service. “It’s a tight medium that you can learn alot about storytelling within, especially tuned for the attention span of the internet.”
Wilhite retired in 2001 after suffering a stroke. After his career as a computer scientist, he enjoyed camping.
Kathaleen Wilhite said he contracted COVID-19 March 1.
“It came on suddenly. He woke up one morning and he said, ‘Honey, I don't feel good. I don't feel good at all.’ And he was running a fever, throwing up so badly. And then the next day he started coughing badly,” she told NPR Wednesday.
Kathaleen took her husband to hospital near their home in Milford, Ohio. There, he was treated with antibiotics before being placed in intensive care. Since she had also contracted the virus, the couple could not see each other.
Eventually, Wilhite was placed in a coma. By that time, his wife had tested negative and was able to see him.
Shortly after she arrived at the hospital March 14, he died
“It’s just so bad. It's just so tragic,” Kathaleen said.
She said online responses have helped her get through the loss so far.
“Not only I loved him, you know. Our family loved him, you know — people loved him and respected his work, and that would mean more to him than anything is how they respected what he did. ... I miss him more than anyone could imagine.”
Wilhite is also survived by a son, four stepchildren, 11 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and four sisters.
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