CompuServe Ships GIF87a

1987

An interlaced GIF loading frame by frame over a simulated 28.8k modem, the exact viewing experience GIF87a was engineered to deliver to CompuServe subscribers. Place: CompuServe, Columbus, Ohio Figures: Steve Wilhite, lead developer · the CompuServe graphics team CompuServe needs an image format its subscribers can actually download. The competitors of 1987: JPEG was approved as ITU-T T.81 in September 1992 (five years after GIF87a), not two years. If 'standardization' is being measured against JPEG's earliest draft work, the working group was already organized in 1986; in either reading, 'two years from standardization' in 1987 is inaccurate., various platform-specific bitmaps (PCX, BMP) that don't compress well over a 1200-baud line. Steve Wilhite's team picks LZW (see [[lzw-patent-1985]]) for the compression and designs a container around it. The spec is small: a header, a logical-screen descriptor, optional global color table, a series of image blocks with local color tables, and a trailer. 256 colors maximum. Lossless. Cross-platform. Released to subscribers on 15 June 1987 as a free standard, with the famous note: GIF is intended as a free and open standard. The patent footnote will come later. Video: A short walk through the LZW dictionary scheme that Wilhite's team wrapped a header and color table around in 1987.