You may not know the name Stephen Wilhite, but if you spend any time on social media, you've likely shared something he created.
Wilhite died last week at the age of 74, his obituary reads. The achievement he's best known for is creating the GIF -- Graphics Interchange Format. Wilhite created it in the 1980s while working at CompuServe, The Verge reports.
Of course, social media wasn't a thing in the 1980s. The reason behind the GIF, according to a 1987 CompuServe document, was to send "high-quality, high-resolution graphics" at a time when the internet was still young and many of those on it were using dial-up modems.
Wilhite's wife, Kathaleen, told The Verge that her husband actually spent much of his time working on the GIF at home.
"He would figure out everything privately in his head and then go to town programming it on the computer," she said.
For those still not sure how to pronounce GIF, it sounds like the peanut butter -- jif. That's what Wilhite told the New York Times in 2013.
"The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations," Wilhite said. "They are wrong. It is a soft 'G,' pronounced 'jif.' End of story."
Wilhite also retired as the Chief Architect of another longtime internet staple -- America Online, or AOL, according to his obituary.
Wilhite received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for his work.
"Even with all his accomplishments, he remained a very humble, kind, and good man," Wilhite's obituary reads.