The GIF
You might remember it as animated GIF, reaction GIF
This spread through many posts rather than one canonical upload.
1996·Early web, before YouTube·informative
An image file format from 1987 that can hold several frames and play them in a loop.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- animated GIF
- Spread in
- 1996
- Format
- GIF
- Made by
- A team at CompuServe led by Steve Wilhite
- Original title
- Graphics Interchange Format
- Origin
- No single original
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A bitmap format released by CompuServe on 15 June 1987, limited to 256 colours, which can hold several frames and loop them forever with no sound and no controls. That last property is the whole cultural story: a GIF starts on its own, repeats, and cannot be paused, which makes it a gesture rather than a video.
Technically it has been obsolete for years: most things called GIFs today are silent looping MP4s served by GIF platforms. The Atlantic wrote its obituary in 2022 and was wrong in the way such obituaries usually are. Steve Wilhite died in 2022; his headstone reads GIF.
Why it matteredWhat changed
A format from 1987 outlived a patent dispute, a campaign to burn it and the format designed to replace it.
TimelineIn order
- Made
CompuServe releases the format.1
- Later
A second version adds timed frames and transparent backgrounds.1
- Later
CompuServe and Unisys, which holds a patent on the compression the format uses, announce that it must be licensed. The backlash starts work on a replacement, PNG.1
- Later
The Netscape browser adds looping for animated GIFs.1
- Later
A campaign called Burn All GIFs asks websites to drop the format.1
- Later
The American patent expires.1
- Mainstream
The American arm of Oxford’s dictionaries names GIF, as a verb, its word of the year.1
- Corrected
Accepting a Webby award, Wilhite says the word is pronounced with a soft g.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asIt is pronounced with a hard g, as in gift.
ActuallyIts creator said otherwise, in public, in 2013. Polls find most people use the hard g anyway.1
Commonly remembered asAnimation was added later.
ActuallyThe first version, in 1987, could already hold more than one image. Looping in a browser came in 1995.1
What it createdWhat came out of it
- It became Giphy2013
A database and search engine for animated GIFs.
- It became Tenor2014
A search engine and database for GIFs.
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · copied, redrawn and reused until the original stopped mattering · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. The example shown is one surviving copy and is not claimed as the first.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
ConnectedFollow it further
- It helped spread Dancing BabyGIF · 1996
The animation spread once it had been converted from a 3D software file into an animated GIF that any browser could show.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things