Steve Wilhite


Steve Wilhite is an American computer scientist who worked at CompuServe and was the primary creator of the GIF file format, which went on to become the de facto standard for 8-bit color images on the Internet until PNG became a viable alternative. He developed the GIF in 1987. By 2016, the format had found mainstream use in website design, social media posts, workflow documents and how-to guides.

Biography

Wilhite remained on the CompuServe/AOL payroll into the first decade of the 21st century, working on a variety of CompuServe systems. These included CompuServe's wire protocols, such as Host Micro Interface and CompuServe B protocol for the CompuServe Information Manager, new service features in the early 1990s, Web chat software in the late 1990s, and investigating Web community models until his departure after being disabled by a stroke. He has since partially recovered.
Before working with CompuServe Information Manager he ran a team that created compilers and run-time systems for use on the DECsytem-10 computers that were the major computing platforms used by CompuServe. Most notable were the Fortran and BASIC compilers and run-time systems and a substantial library called "BTOOLS" to support BLISS programming.
Wilhite's name comes up frequently in debate over the pronunciation of the GIF acronym. “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.” The intended pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand Jif.