FGAZ 18-08 Page 2 28 Mar 2022


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RIP: Creators of the GIF and TRS-80

From: https://tinyurl.com/57y5cjnh (theregister.com)

Thank you, Stephen E. Wilhite for your seminal image format, and John
Roach for your pioneering microcomputer

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor
Thu 24 Mar 2022 // 08:00 UTC

Two important figures in computing industry have died.

Stephen E. Wilhite will be remembered as the creator of the Graphics
Interchange Format -- the ubiquitous GIF -- and always insisted it
be pronounced as "jif" with a soft "g".

Those who pointed out that his preferred pronunciation was
inconsistent or illogical were met with a stern: "They are wrong".

Wilhite created the GIF when working at CompuServe -- a pioneering
online service founded in 1969 and which, by the mid-1980s, had
evolved to the point some users expected to see graphics when they
dialled in to check their mails or chat in forums.

Wilhite and his colleagues devised the GIF in 1987 to make image
display possible on CompuServe. The format became a de facto standard
and then enjoyed an enormous revival in the early 2000s thanks to its
ability to display animations -- a feature greatly appreciated before
the widespread advent of streaming video -- and later by users of
social media.

A family obituary for Wilhite states that he received a Webby Lifetime
Achievement Award for the GIF and used his acceptance speech to again
restate his preferred pronunciation for the file format he created.

Wilhite and finished his career as chief architect from America Online
(which acquired CompuServe in 1997). He died aged 74 and is survived
by his wife Kathaleen, his son David, several stepchildren, 11
grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Many GIFs almost certainly found their way onto the TRS-80 -- an
early personal microcomputer sold by Tandy through its network of
Radio Shack stores.

The computer was the brainchild of John Roach, who in the mid-1970s
saw the growing market for personal computers sold as kits and decided
a market existed for a pre-built machine.

That machine was the TRS-80, and its $599.95 price tag (about $1050 in
today's money) saw it sell strongly when it reached stores in 1977.
And as Tandy ran over 8,000 stores at the time, the TRS-80 brought
computers into the suburbs like no other previous machine.


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