Stephen Wilhite, creator of the animated GIF, dies at 74

NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - Mr Stephen E. Wilhite, a computer programmer who was best known for inventing the GIF, the looping animations that became a universal language for conveying humour, sarcasm and angst on social media and in instant messages, died in Cincinnati on March 14. He was 74.

His death, at a hospital, was confirmed Thursday (March 24) by his wife, Mrs Kathaleen Wilhite, who said that the cause was complications of Covid-19.

In 1987, while Mr Wilhite was working for CompuServe, the United State's first online service, he led a team of engineers who revolutionised how people could share video clips on the Internet. They called the format they created a GIF, short for Graphics Interchange Format, a type of compressed image file with an ease of use that made it enduring.

The technology's appeal expanded from computers to smartphones, giving the famous and the not-so-famous the ability to share GIFs on platforms like Twitter and Facebook and eventually to create their own loops. It inspired the famous "dancing baby" GIF in 1996, which Mr Wilhite cited as one of his favourites, and popular apps like Giphy.

"I saw the format I wanted in my head and then I started programming," Mr Wilhite told The New York Times in 2013.

That year, Mr Wilhite, who was also a former chief architect for America Online, received a lifetime achievement honour at the Webby Awards.

Tributes to Mr Wilhite spread online after his death was reported, many of them, fittingly, in the form of GIFs.

The Police Department in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, honoured Wilhite on its official Twitter account Thursday, sharing a GIF of Captain America saluting. The Bengaluru Football Club in India encouraged its followers on Twitter to share GIFs in tribute and offered one of its own: an animated portrait of Mr Wilhite.

Mr Wilhite was born in West Chester, Ohio, on March 3, 1948. His father, Mr Clarence Earl Wilhite, was a factory worker and his mother, Ms Anna Lou Dorsey, was a nurse.

Later in life, Mr Stephen Wilhite captured the history of his invention in a three-page document that he shared with his children and grandchildren, his wife said.

When one of his granddaughters, Kylie, told her computer teacher that her grandfather had invented the GIF, the teacher did not believe her, Mrs Wilhite said. This prompted Mr Wilhite to write a letter to the teacher to confirm the story. "Then he signed it Steve Wilhite and he said, 'Google it'," Mrs Wilhite said.

Mr Wilhite retired at 51 after a stroke, but he kept busy using his computer programming skills to augment his model railroad, a hobby that his wife said was supposed to be confined to the basement of his home but spilled into other rooms, with Mr Wilhite building model-train bridges in his upstairs office.

Mrs Wilhite said that her husband also loved to spend time outdoors and that they went on many camping trips with her son Rick, who she said was one of Mr Wilhite's "best buddies". They travelled from their home in Milford, Ohio, to the tip of Florida and to the Grand Canyon, she said. "Steve loved the pine trees in the north, and I love the ocean, so that gave us a big span," Mrs Wilhite said.

The couple married in 2010, when they were both in their 60s. Mrs Wilhite said that their first date was at a Cracker Barrel the year before they married.

"We were together every day from that day," she said. "We might have met later in life, but we sure made up for it."

In addition to his wife, Mr Wilhite's survivors include a son, David Wilhite; his stepchildren Rick Groves, Robin Landrum, Renee Bennett and Rebecca Boaz; 11 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A previous marriage ended in divorce.

Mr Wilhite tested positive for Covid-19 on March 1 and was hospitalised a few days later, according to Mrs Wilhite, who also contracted Covid-19 but had less severe symptoms. She said that the doctor told her that the virus attacked Mr Wilhite's right lung, which had been damaged from the stroke.

In 2012, Oxford American Dictionaries recognised GIF as its "word of the year". While the usefulness of Mr Wilhite's innovation was undisputed, the pronunciation of "GIF" was a frequent subject of debate - and even the subject of a Final Jeopardy! answer. Was it pronounced with a hard G sound or a soft one?

"The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations," Mr Wilhite told the Times in 2013. "They are wrong. It is a soft G, pronounced 'jif.' End of story."