The story behind the birth of the lightweight image format 'GIF' that can also create animations
On March 14, 2022,
How Steve Wilhite created the GIF in 1987 at CompuServe
https://www.fastcompany.com/90734869/history-of-gif-steve-wilhite
Steve Wilhite was inspired to develop GIFs at the request of Alexander Trevor, an executive at CompuServe, a major American personal computer telecommunications company to which he belonged in the 1980s. At the time, manufacturers such as Apple and IBM were developing their own image formats, so Trevor said, 'I didn't want to upload images in 79 different formats. That's why CompuServe has universal images. I needed a format. '
Although JPG already existed as a widely used image format at that time, JPG had the disadvantage that it could not clearly display images such as stock price charts and weather forecast charts. So Trevor asked Wilhite to create a lightweight, good-looking image file format in this era when dial-up modems were the mainstream.
Wilhite, who started developing GIF in this way, focused on LZW, a highly efficient data compression technology. Judging that it is the most suitable compression algorithm to meet the needs of CompuServe shown by Mr. Trevor, based on this, we developed a GIF format that can pack a lot of image information into the smallest possible capacity, June 15, 1987. Released in.
Regarding GIFs, Trevor said, 'This image format met all my requirements and was very useful for CompuServe's products.' In addition, GIF was convenient not only for creating still images but also for creating animations, so it was adopted not only by CompuServe products but also by Mosaic, the first graphical browser, and Netscape Navigator. In particular, the specification of loop playback of GIFs in Netscape Navigator has become a factor in gaining some hypnotic appeal, such as GIF animation becoming one of the main media of
There were times when GIFs were considered obsolete as the Internet became faster and more sophisticated. However, with the rise of Twitter on social media, Reddit on Internet bulletin boards, and Tumblr, a microblogging service, GIF comes to life. Regarding the resurgence of GIFs, Fast Company describes, 'Technical limitations of the 1980s, such as the 256-color palette, have become part of the timeless appeal of GIFs.'
With the spread of broadband services in recent years, Internet users can enjoy images without worrying about the file size, but GIF still has a big presence. In 2020, GIPHY , the online database that is the largest storage place for GIFs, was acquired by Facebook for $ 400 million (about 43 billion yen at the rate at that time).
Wilhite won the Webby Award in 2013, also known as the 'Academy Award for the Internet', for his achievements in developing GIFs. About this, Mr. Trevor said, 'Wilhite is famous for making GIFs, which is one of his unknown achievements. By the time he invented GIFs, he was already in computer language. I wrote a database management system for CompuServe using FORTRAN and BASIC by myself, and also worked on CompuServe's 'Host Micro Interface' protocol. Thanks to that, CompuServe's software can be expressed graphically. I did. '
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