The Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, was the result of this work. He was tasked with finding a solution that would take a large image and decrease the file size. Steve Wilhite, worked as a computer scientist at CompuServe.
They offered image downloads, but with most people using modems that worked at a mind-blowingly slow rate of 1,200 bits per second, there were considerable limitations in what they could offer. In the beginning: there were GIFsīack in the days of dial-up CompuServe was the first major online service provider offering email and other services for personal home computer users. But the story of web-ready images starts four years before. The internet as we know it first emerged in the 1990s.
