Welcome to the Original JPEG Heritage Association

In November 2019 an international group of core contributors to the original JPEG standard (1986-1992) formed the Original JPEG Heritage Association. The group consists of - in alphabetical order:

		Then	Now
•	Graham Hudson - United Kingdom Founding Chairman of JPEG Association Board Member
•	Dr. Alain Léger - France Leader of the ADCT development team Association Board Member
•	Birger Niss - Denmark Principal coding algorithm developer Association Secretary General
•	Dr. István Sebestyén - Germany CCITT Special Rapporteur Association President
•	Dr. Jørgen Vaaben - Denmark Principal coding algorithm developer Association Board Member
•	Gregory Wallace - United States Chairman of JPEG at Standardisation Association Board Member

The association tells the exciting story of one of the most successful international standards, used billions of times each day. Told by those who made it.

Why did we decide to found now the “Original JPEG Heritage Association”?

• The original Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) was working only for a few years from November 1986 until March 1993. During this time it was responsible for the technical development of the DCT based compression technology of the JPEG-1 standard (ITU-T T.81¦ISO/IEC 10918-1). It was also working on ITU-T T.83 ISO/IEC 10918.2 (Conformance Testing) and ITU-T T.84¦ISO/IEC 10918-3 (Extensions). However those two standards had to be finished by ITU-T SG8 “Study Question”: Common Components for Image Communications and ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 WG1 using the common text format and “Collaborative Interchange” co-operation mode. As time went on, the original source of JPEG started to fade away, and today not-all who talks in name of JPEG has the knowledge, experience and the right to do so. On the other hand the JPEG-1 standard is one of the most frequently used worldwide. As a “human heritage” standard – at least in the image reading and presentation mode – it will never go away.
• We are very proud of such success. However, since the original JPEG Engineering Generation is now in its 70ies and 80ies, but they are still around, it is very important that the memories, the knowledge is being documented and shared now. In a few years this might be too late. A big advantage that today this is still from “first hand” without distortion, exactly as it happened.