Stephen Wilhite, a computer programmer who invented the gif, the humble but versatile file format that became an internet mainstay, helping people share charts, photographs and viral animations – including one of Wilhite’s personal favourites, a looping image of a dancing baby – has died aged 74.
Wilhite was working at CompuServe, the US’s first big online service provider, when he created the graphics interchange format (gif) in 1987, a few years before the advent of the world wide web. The company’s chief technical officer, Alexander “Sandy” Trevor, had enlisted him to make an image file format that used lossless compression and could work across an array of computer systems, enabling users to share photos, stock charts, weather maps and other files across the slow communication lines of the dial-up age, regardless of whether they were using an Apple, Atari, Commodore, IBM or Tandy computer.
