[ Retro GIF of the Week ] Cheryl Tiegs: Queen of the GIF
January 25th, 2013 by Benj Edwards
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I’ve always thought of VC&G as sort of a family friendly blog, so I don’t plan on delving into adult GIFs any time soon. But we might as well talk about bikini photos, because they were some of the most heavily traded GIF images in the BBS days. They provided culturally acceptable PG- or PG-13-level titillation, and male teenagers (arguably the primary users of BBS systems in many areas) flocked to them.
Just recently, I searched my GIF archives for the oldest GIF format bikini photo I could find. I came up with this image of Cheryl Tiegs in a file dated October 29th, 1987, which is only four months after the June 15, 1987 publication date of the first GIF specification (GIF87a, for those keeping track).
The image itself is derived from a photo taken by Walter Iooss Jr. for the 1978 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. The sharpness of the image suggests to me that it was scanned (vs. video captured), either with a flatbed or handheld color scanner, and likely from that issue itself.
I don’t know who scanned it. It could have been Jim Maxey, who originated many GIF files in the format’s early days, but since the image isn’t tagged with his BBS information, I doubt it. Maxey also tended to work with video capture boards verses scanners at that time.
Regardless of who created this image, it’s a nice, relatively tame example of 16-color EGA bikini art. Upon viewing it, you can almost feel its 1970s girl-next-door wholesomeness flowing out of your computer screen. And that’s despite her see-through fishnet bathing suit, which was scandalous in 1978.
(Note that Tiegs’ name is misspelled in the file name as “TEIGS”)
| Retro GIF of the Week Fact Box | |
| Source File Name: | TEIGS.GIF |
| Source File Date: | October 29, 1987 |
| Source File Format: | GIF – 87a (non-interlaced) |
| Dimensions: | 640 x 350 pixels (EGA) |
| Color Depth: | 4-bit (16 color) |
| Origin Platform: | IBM PC |
| Derived From: | Scanned photograph taken by Walter Iooss Jr. |
| Creation Date: | 1987 |
| Artist: | Unknown |
| If you know more about the origin of this image, please leave a comment. | |
January 25th, 2013 at 4:52 pm
Family Guy comments in 3…2…1…
January 25th, 2013 at 5:23 pm
Awesome. Man, you were able to find a file that old? Did you have it saved on a floppy? I’m lucky if I can access any of my files from 2001, as most of them were backed up on stock CDs, many of which are deemed unreadable on my mac now (is it true that data lasts only about 10 years or so on the cheap media?).
Any further back than that would have to be one of my ZIP disks. Sigh. I remember when 100MB felt like a whole universe of storage.
January 27th, 2013 at 11:29 am
She’s considerably less nude when dithered down to 16 colors.