Technology · 2
Which online service company originally developed the GIF format that became entangled in Unisys's 1994 patent enforcement campaign?
Answer
CompuServe
CompuServe introduced the GIF format in 1987 to let subscribers share compressed images efficiently, and found itself at the center of controversy when Unisys asserted its LZW patent against the format in 1994.
💡 Did you know?
GIF creator CompuServe faced Unisys patent lawsuit over the format in 1994, nearly destroying the image standard everyone used on early websites.
Other options people guess
- America Online (AOL)
- Prodigy
- GEnie
Topics
- 1980s
- 1990s
- internet-history
- online-services
Know your technology trivia?
Play a free Technology quiz and see how many you get right — no signup needed to start.
More Technology facts
Technology
Which country launched the first national web index in 1993, allowing citizens to search domestically hosted websites before most countries had any organised web directory?
Finland was the first country in the world to declare broadband internet access a legal right for all citizens, doing so in 2010.
Technology
Which country hosted the first-ever web server outside of Europe, brought online in December 1991 at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center?
SLAC's first web server hosted a particle-physics database — meaning the earliest content on the web outside Europe was a catalog of scientific papers, not a homepage.
Technology
In the mid-1990s, what was the approximate monthly cost of a standard AOL dial-up internet subscription before the company switched to unlimited flat-rate pricing in 1996?
AOL's dial-up dominance in the 1990s relied partly on sending millions of free trial CDs via mail, creating massive e-waste before recycling awareness existed.
Technology
GeoCities organized its millions of user homepages into themed 'neighborhoods' based on content type. Which of these was an actual GeoCities neighborhood dedicated to technology and computing topics?
GeoCities divided the web into themed neighborhoods (SiliconValley, Broadway, etc.), making 38 million user homepages feel like a digital city before Yahoo deleted it all in 2009.
Technology
What specific software error caused NASA's Mariner 1 probe to be destroyed just 293 seconds after its 1962 launch?
A single misplaced hyphen in Mariner 1's guidance code in 1962 caused a $18.5 million Venus probe to explode 293 seconds after launch.
Technology
The QWERTY keyboard layout has remained the dominant standard for English-language keyboards for roughly how long, despite the mechanical problem it was designed to solve no longer existing?
The QWERTY keyboard layout was deliberately designed to slow typists down and prevent mechanical typewriter jams—a problem that hasn't existed for decades.