Every day, billions of images are stored, shared, and uploaded in the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format, making it one of the most widely used digital image standards in history. From smartphones and digital cameras to websites and social media platforms, JPEG has played a crucial role in how the world stores and shares photographs for more than three decades.

Contrary to popular belief, JPEG wasn’t invented by a single person. It was developed by an international committee known as the Joint Photographic Experts Group>, which brought together engineers and researchers from around the world during the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of the key contributors was Gregory K. Wallace, whose work helped shape the final standard. Other important contributors included researchers such as Joan L. Mitchell and William B. Pennebaker, among many others.

Rather than commercializing JPEG as proprietary software, the committee developed it as an open international standard. This allowed companies including camera manufacturers, computer makers, software developers, and eventually smartphone manufacturers to adopt the format without relying on a single company’s ecosystem. Because devices from different brands could all read and save JPEG files, the format rapidly became the universal language of digital photography.

The openness of the standard was a major reason for its success, but it also meant that the engineers behind JPEG did not become billionaires from licensing the technology. Instead of building a private company around the format, they focused on creating a specification that anyone could implement. Their work helped fuel the growth of the internet, digital cameras, online publishing, and social media by ensuring that images could be shared seamlessly across virtually every computing platform.