Stephen Wilhite (1948–2022), creator of the GIF 

Stephen Wilhite was a computer scientist who created the GIF.   

• Died: Monday, March 14, 2022. (Who else died on March 14?) 
• Details of death: Died from complications of Covid-19 at the age of 74.
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The GIF 

Stephen Wilhite’s team at CompuServe was asked to work on a better way for people to send large images at a time when people were using slow dial-up speeds. He created a way to compress the images without losing the image quality. The first GIF or graphics interchange format was a plane flying through the sky. Wilhite made GIFs customizable which led to the creation of animated GIFs. GIFs are more popular today than ever with the rise of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. He received a Webby lifetime achievement award for his work in 2013.

Tributes to Stephen Wilhite 

Full Obituary: CNN

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