The Untold Story of the Creation of GIF At CompuServe In 1987 (fastcompany.com) 43
Back in 1987 Alexander Trevor worked with the GIF format's creator, Steve Wilhite, at CompuServe. 35 years later Fast Company tech editor Harry McCracken (also Slashdot reader harrymcc) located Trevor for the inside story:
Wilhite did not come up with the GIF format in order to launch a billion memes. It was 1987, and he was a software engineer at CompuServe, the most important online service until an upstart called America Online took off in the 1990s. And he developed the format in response to a request from CompuServe executive Alexander "Sandy" Trevor. (Trevor's most legendary contribution to CompuServe was not instigating GIF: He also invented the service's CB Simulator — the first consumer chat rooms and one of the earliest manifestation of social networking, period. That one he coded himself as a weekend project in 1980.)
GIF came to be because online services such as CompuServe were getting more graphical, but the computer makers of the time — such as Apple, Commodore, and IBM — all had their own proprietary image types. "We didn't want to have to put up images in 79 different formats," explains Trevor. CompuServe needed one universal graphics format.
Even though the World Wide Web and digital cameras were still in the future, work was already underway on the image format that came to be known as JPEG. But it wasn't optimized for CompuServe's needs: For example, stock charts and weather graphics didn't render crisply. So Trevor asked Wilhite to create an image file type that looked good and downloaded quickly at a time when a 2,400 bits-per-second dial-up modem was considered torrid. Reading a technical journal, Wilhite came across a discussion of an efficient compression technique known as LZW for its creators — Abraham Limpel, Jacob Ziv, and Terry Welch. It turned out to be an ideal foundation for what CompuServe was trying to build, and allowed GIF to pack a lot of image information into as few bytes as possible. (Much later, computing giant Unisys, which gained a patent for LZW, threatened companies that used it with lawsuits, leading to a licensing agreement with CompuServe and the creation of the patent-free PNG image format.)
GIF officially debuted on June 15, 1987. "It met my requirements, and it was extremely useful for CompuServe," says Trevor....
GIF was also versatile, offering the ability to store the multiple pictures that made it handy for creating mini-movies as well as static images. And it spread beyond CompuServe, showing up in Mosaic, the first graphical web browser, and then in Netscape Navigator. The latter browser gave GIFs the ability to run in an infinite loop, a crucial feature that only added to their hypnotic quality. Seeing cartoon hamsters dance for a split second is no big whoop, but watching them shake their booties endlessly was just one of many cultural moments that GIFs have given us.
GIF came to be because online services such as CompuServe were getting more graphical, but the computer makers of the time — such as Apple, Commodore, and IBM — all had their own proprietary image types. "We didn't want to have to put up images in 79 different formats," explains Trevor. CompuServe needed one universal graphics format.
Even though the World Wide Web and digital cameras were still in the future, work was already underway on the image format that came to be known as JPEG. But it wasn't optimized for CompuServe's needs: For example, stock charts and weather graphics didn't render crisply. So Trevor asked Wilhite to create an image file type that looked good and downloaded quickly at a time when a 2,400 bits-per-second dial-up modem was considered torrid. Reading a technical journal, Wilhite came across a discussion of an efficient compression technique known as LZW for its creators — Abraham Limpel, Jacob Ziv, and Terry Welch. It turned out to be an ideal foundation for what CompuServe was trying to build, and allowed GIF to pack a lot of image information into as few bytes as possible. (Much later, computing giant Unisys, which gained a patent for LZW, threatened companies that used it with lawsuits, leading to a licensing agreement with CompuServe and the creation of the patent-free PNG image format.)
GIF officially debuted on June 15, 1987. "It met my requirements, and it was extremely useful for CompuServe," says Trevor....
GIF was also versatile, offering the ability to store the multiple pictures that made it handy for creating mini-movies as well as static images. And it spread beyond CompuServe, showing up in Mosaic, the first graphical web browser, and then in Netscape Navigator. The latter browser gave GIFs the ability to run in an infinite loop, a crucial feature that only added to their hypnotic quality. Seeing cartoon hamsters dance for a split second is no big whoop, but watching them shake their booties endlessly was just one of many cultural moments that GIFs have given us.
GIF format in order to launch a billion memes..... (Score:1)
no fucking shit....
why the fuck is this even in the subject heading..
it was 40 years prior....
again....why is it mentioned..
Re: (Score:2)
News
For
Nerds
Most of the people here haven't made the conversion to naked political partisan yet.
So, likely, this article about the history of one of the most successful filetypes in computing history is NEWSWORTHY.
Re: (Score:2)
So, likely, this article about the history of one of the most successful filetypes in computing history is NEWSWORTHY.
News is, you know, what's new. This is what's old, and further, there is literally one fact in this story that was not already in Wikipedia.
This article is NOT NEWSWORTHY. It's not even news. Further, the article purports to be about the history of the creation of GIF, but it spends dramatically more space talking about how the format has been used since its creation than it does talking about its creation... which per the headline, is what it's supposed to be about. Therefore it is not only not newsworthy,
Re: GIF format in order to launch a billion memes. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The news is that GIF's creator recently died. Should have probably been in the headline. Especially since TFA said almost nothing about how GIF was created.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the people here haven't made the conversion to naked political partisan yet.
I seriously doubt that. People do that by the time they are out of high school now, and this site doesn't have anyone under 40 on it.
Re: (Score:2)
At the time, computers supported no more than 256 colours
Your computer, maybe. Mine supported 4096 colors, albeit not all on the same line.
and they were too slow to decode JPEG at a comfortable rate.
That's absolutely true, and there were other considerations too since color JPEGs are 24 bit and you not only have to decode the image but also downsample it somehow into a number of colors you can display. Doing this poorly can be done a pixel at a time, but doing it well requires loading the whole image into memory... and lots of computers of the day didn't have enough memory to decode JPEGs that they could otherwise [more o
Re: (Score:1)
drinkypoo no one gives a shit about your second rate toy computer mom bought you at k-mart, with its second rate sega genesis games and a single button joystick :p
Re: (Score:2)
That's absolutely true, and there were other considerations too since color JPEGs are 24 bit and you not only have to decode the image but also downsample it somehow into a number of colors you can display. Doing this poorly can be done a pixel at a time, but doing it well requires loading the whole image into memory... and lots of computers of the day didn't have enough memory to decode JPEGs that they could otherwise [more or less] display.
I wonder what the first retail computer with 24bpp graphics was.
I can't remember there being an option for my 286 to display more than 2556 colours, but for my 386, there was.
I had a Tseng Labs VGA card, and there was a plug-in highcolour DAC available that gave it either 15/16-bit highcolour (32k or 64k colours) or 24-bit (17M colours) truecolour.
I also remember in the 286 days that JPEG (and JFIF) images were uploaded to bulletin boards, but you had to first download them to disk and then run JPEG2GIF to convert them to a 256 colour GIF that the computer could actuall
Re: (Score:2)
So true. Back in that days I had a VGA card which could show 256 colors at a resolution of 320x200 pixels oder 16 colors at 640x480 pixels. To see the images at a higher resolution, I wrote a dithering routine and was able to look at the GIF.pictures a the higher resoloution of 640x4080
Let's settle this (Score:2)
Let's settle this with the following modest proposal:
Re: (Score:2)
Or like the soft "g" in gentleman, gentile, geranium, ginger, giraffe, etc.?
Or how about like the even softer "g" in genre or the second "g" in garage.?
Re: (Score:2)
Lempel (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I see you left out Jacob Ziv...
Oops (Score:2)
Did anyone else come here thinking they read “GIF of creation” in the headline, and hoping to see the Big Bang?
Not enough coffee today, I guess
Re: (Score:2)
The untold story? It's a told story. (Score:2)
Look, if you rip all the expository bullshit out of that article, it essentially doesn't exist. Let's see if we can make a list of all the facts in this article which are actually related to the creation of GIF, it shouldn't take long.
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely "the team" was a single person. The GIF algorithm is not that complicated you need a whole team to work on it.
I'm a software developer myself, an I often write or speak "we" did this and that, when in reality I'm a single person and using the plural only to give my work more importance.
Re: (Score:2)
The GIF algorithm is not that complicated you need a whole team to work on it.
Sure, it's pretty simple stuff, especially the original basic format. But that doesn't mean multiple people didn't wind up working on it anyway. Unfortunately WP does not offer any relevant citation for the team claim. The citation nearest it is to the spec [w3.org] which doesn't provide any insight.
Re: (Score:1)
"Most" is dependent on where you hang out. The hart G was invented by pretentious jerks who thought they knew better than others. No, there is no specific rule in English on how to pronounce acronyms, in fact most rules in English are full of exceptions. And when someone creates and names something, their wishes are usually followed. But noooo, some pseudo-pendants created the "hard G" tale because of inane reasons (including that it sounds like a peanut butter brand otherwise - seriously!).
I guess I would
Re: (Score:2)
So he did reference that in his earliest announcements of the new format, remarking that Choosy programmers choose GIF as a way to be funny while driving acceptance of the new graphic file format.
It. Worked.
Re: (Score:2)
Graphic is not pronounced Jraphic.
Most G words make sense and frankly anything with a J sound should change spelling instead of us maintaining these errors while we allow short term fads to create new words and new definitions - some which fade out of use after a decade; others sadly continue... example: literally meaning figuratively with emphasis (so it == it's antonym.)
If languages "evolve" then it should be an improvement but many changes are "devolving" including the alternative use of G. I admit long
Re: (Score:2)
Jay-Feg, amirite?
Re: (Score:2)
How about retaliate JIF by changing JPEG pronunciation to G-feg? or G-peg. or Ga-Peg?
Re: (Score:3)
With JPEG, Photographic is not pronounced Potographic.
Re: At least they got the pronunciation right! (Score:1)
I always thought it was for Joint Picture Experts Group.
Can't be bothered to Google to see who's right.
Re: (Score:2)
That's where you're wrong.
Re: (Score:1)
So I am. I'd better not admit it, though, or Slashdot might implode!
Re: (Score:3)
If the guy who created it called it Jif, then that's good enough for me. I've always pronounced it that way.
Reminds me of the days when people disagreed on how to pronounce Linux. It took Linus coming out with a very short audio file pronouncing it for everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
CompuServe - ahead of its time (Score:2)
I am highly nostalgic for this version of the pre-internet as I learned to code by finding folks that helped me get started on Visual Basic in one of the CS forums. Sold a bunch of shareware and made my first grand, which I re-invested to do marketing for my software and incorporate my company (I was 15). The
Since This Thread Is About GIFs... (Score:2)
I have wondered about an annoyance with all Linux distributions I have used (Ubuntu based in recent years, but also before that with SUSE and Fedora) - the standard file viewing tools installed do not allow you to save GIFs. You can open them, but if you want to rename and save (which you can do with JPG, PNG, etc.) the tools says that it is not supported. It isn't because to the GIF patent, which expired on June 20, 2003. I find bug reports in various repos/bug report sites going back more than a decade, i
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't because to[sic] the GIF patent
Historically, it is. That ship had sailed with the rise of PNG. Along with that, using the read-only (and unencumbered) libungif was good enough almost nobody cared about saving GIFs anymore.
Then animated GIFs came into the mainstream, and since many of these programs didn't do animation, there was virtually no point in supporting GIFs since PNG had been mainstream for two decades.