Stephen Earl Wilhite was born in West Chester Township, Ohio, on March 3, 1948, the son of Anna Lou (Dorsey), a nurse, and Clarence Earl Wilhite, a factory worker.[5][6] Wilhite's team at CompuServe developed the GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) in 1987. Its adoption by the earliest web browser in 1991[7] helped make it a few years later in 1995 the most popular image file format.[8] Twenty years later in 2016, the format still had mainstream use in website design, social media posts, workflow documents and how-to guides.[9][10]
Wilhite remained a CompuServe/AOL employee 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 (HMI) and CompuServe B protocol for the CompuServe Information Manager (CIM); new service features in the early 1990s; Web chat software in the late 1990s; and investigating Web community models until his 2001 departure after suffering a stroke.[4]
Wilhite's name comes up frequently in debate[11] over the pronunciation of the GIF acronym.[4] "The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations," Wilhite said. "They are wrong. It is a soft 'G', pronounced 'jif'. End of story."[4] The intended pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand Jif.[12]
Wilhite died at a hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, following complications from COVID-19,[13] on March 14, 2022, aged 74.[5][11][14]