Stephen E. Wilhite, a computer programmer who was best known for inventing the GIF, the looping animations that became a universal language for conveying humor, 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 on Thursday by his wife, Kathaleen Wilhite, who said that the cause was complications of Covid-19.
In 1987, while Mr. Wilhite was working for CompuServe, the nation’s first online service, he led a team of engineers who revolutionized 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 favorites, and popular apps like Giphy.
Mr. Wilhite tested positive for Covid-19 on March 1 and was hospitalized a few days later, according to Ms. Wilhite, who also contracted Covid-19 but had less severe symptoms. She said that a doctor told her that the virus attacked Mr. Wilhite’s right lung, which had been damaged from a stroke he suffered at age 51.
In 2012, Oxford American Dictionaries recognized GIF as its “word of the year.”
