Steve Wilhite, well known for creating the GIF format in 1987, has passed away at the age of 74 due to covid related complications.
According to a report by The Verge, The news was confirmed by Kathaleen, his wife, that he died to post Covid-19 complications on March 14, but the news has just become public now.
Notably, Wilhite invented the Graphics Interchange Format while working at CompuServe in the late 80s.
The format, which enabled simple animation and utilized fast download speeds, became widely used in the internet’s infancy because it was supported by many applications and operating systems.
Steve Wilhite clarified that his famous file format was pronounced “Jif.”
At the turn of the century, GIFs were omnipresent on MySpace, before becoming widely used to create viral memes at the start of the 2010s.
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