THE GIF has long been used as a means of communication across social media platforms.
But many who use them are only now finding out what the widely known acronym means.
1
There has been some debate surrounding the question of what does GIF stand for, but creator, American computer scientist Steve Wilhite has confirmed that GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format.
The name was chosen by Wilhite and his team specifically so they could call it a GIF.
He developed the file format in 1987 while working at the internet service provider Compuserve and during a time of slow dial-up connections.
Wilhite used a data compression technique which allowed images to be sent at much faster speeds than ever before.
His invention meant that the company was able to offer customers the ability to download colour pictures rather than only black-and-white.
Another contentious debate has been how to correctly pronounce the acronym.
While some pronounce it phonetically as “gif”, Wilhite has previously revealed it’s actually pronounced “jif”.
Speaking to the New York Times, Steve Wilhite said he was “annoyed” there was still a debate over how to say the acronym.
