Happy Birthday GIF file format
And BTW,
it's pronounced like Jif, not a hard G as in Gift.
From
IGN Entertainment:
Happy 25th Birthday, GIF
25 years ago today the Graphics Interchange Format was released, and the world has never been the same again.
The GIF was originally released by CompuServe to replace RLE - a file format which was limited to black and white only. But the GIF evolved over the next 25 years - first gaining color, then better color, then the ability to repeat itself, and finally an adoring audience willing to take GIFs to the next level.
It has been a while...
GIF was the first lossless format that offered a large measure of compression and options for color and animation. The porn industry went nuts and computer graphics took off. Color graphics cards used to cost about $600 in 1987 for a 640X480 VGA card -- 64 colors.
Adjusted for inflation, this is $1,213.81 in 2012 dollarettes. Now, a 1080p card is less than $200 -- thank the porn industry (first) and the video game industry (second to the plate).
Posted by DaveH at June 16, 2012 9:45 PM