A “zipper” means a zipper in the English-speaking world. The US programmer Phil Katz thought of the zip principle when he developed the zip format in the late 1980s. His idea of compressing files and thus creating space on computers has subsequently developed into a global standard for data compression.
The history of data compression does not begin with the Zip, but basically in the middle of the 19th century. In 1838 the American Samuel Finley Breese Morse developed the Morse code. This speeds up the transmission of messages by telegraph considerably. In the Morse alphabet, each letter is assigned a specific sequence of short and long tones. When coding, the developer Morse took into account how often a letter occurs in everyday speech. Letters that are used particularly frequently therefore consist of short tones, while letters that are used less frequently consist of longer tones.
Roughly speaking, the zip format invented by programmer Phil Katz is based on this principle almost 150 years later. The American is not the first person to work on a format to condense data. As is so often the case in computer history, Phil Katz just got the timing right to market his zip format.
Zip format arises from a dispute
However, the development is not entirely silent. In the mid-1980s, System Enhancement Associates (SEA) brought ARC, a successful format for data compression, onto the market. Phil Katz uses this format and programs his own format PKArc based on the ARC code. PK stands for Phil Katz. He distributes the format and the necessary program via shareware. From the income from sales, the programmer founds his own company PKWare.
It all sounds like a classic climber story. However, SEA is now contacting Phil Katz. The ARC inventors claim the programmer stole the source code from SEA. Both parties meet again in court. Phil Katz finally comes to an agreement with SEA and promises not to continue selling PKArc.
But Phil Katz does not remain idle, but develops a compression program that will put ARC compression in the shade. PKZIP is the name of the new baby. It saw the light of day in 1989 and soon ended up on countless computers worldwide due to the rapid spread via well-known shareware platforms.
Zip bundles data bundles from numerical codes
The Zip format developed by Phil Katz is a lossless data compression. This means that the compressed data end up on the computer in their original form after decoding. How it works? Zip compresses the data in a similar way to Morse code, using what is known as redundancy reduction.
In redundancy reduction, the encoding program scans files for repeating characters. Example: The article “die” occurs 500 times in a Word text. The Zip format assigns a code to the word, such as “1”. This creates a code of numbers from a long text, which significantly reduces the memory space used. However, the principle works on a much deeper level, namely in the area of bits and bytes.
When it comes to data compression, there is also the so-called irrelevance reduction. This method is particularly useful for images, songs and videos. Known formats that reduce data in this way are called JPG or MP3. Photos, music collections or video archives can also be reduced in size using a zip. However, the format of digital media creates little space on the home computer. Zip’s strengths lie more in the compression of text-based files.
Still, it can be an advantage to pack text, images, music, and videos into a single zip file. Especially when different files have to be sent by e-mail, it is faster if everything is bundled together in a zip data container and sent digitally.
Also read: The importance of CC and BCC in an email
Inventor of zip format suffers from fame
In the early years of the Internet, the term “zipping” was used as a synonym for reducing the size of data in order to then send it by e-mail. Nowadays, the operating systems of the two major providers Microsoft and Apple have in-house compression functions. The term “zipping” is often still used, although it may be a completely different format. Well-known compression formats and programs are ARC, RAR, TAR or WinZip. Each of the countless formats has its own advantages. It is therefore worth checking which format is best suited to free up space on your own computer.
Unfortunately, Phil Katz didn’t notice much of the further development of his zip format. His company PKWare developed remarkably in the 1990s. With the success, however, the alcohol consumption of the company founder also increases. At some point, Phil Katz rarely appears in his company. Instead, he spends most of his life in motels. His lifeless body was found in a motel room on April 14, 2000. The coroner later determined the cause of death to be bleeding from the pancreas, caused by acute alcohol poisoning. Phil Katz will only be 37 years old.