Lou Ottens: former Philips engineer - "Father" of cassette tape died at the age of 94

Lou Ottens, the former Philips electronics engineer who invented the cassette tape, has passed away.

On March 11, according to the Guardian, Ottens died at his home in the village of Duizel last weekend. The Dutch sound engineer was the inventor of the cassette tape in the early 1960s. Before that, music lovers had to listen with more bulky equipment such as phonographs, vinyl records, etc. Living time, Ottens once said on the Guardian: "We're naughty boys. We don't think we've created anything great."

Not only cassette tapes, but Dutch engineer Lou Ottens has twice revolutionized the global music industry. As product development director of the famous Philips corporation, Mr. Ottens invented the cassette tape, shrinking the bulky magnetic tape into a compact storage item in the palm of the hand. Then it was he who contributed a great deal to the development of the familiar CD of the 90s and 2000s.

Lou Ottens was born on June 21, 1926. From an early age, he showed an interest in engineering. Even as a teenager, Ottens built a radio for himself and his parents to listen to Radio Oranje to update the news during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. He even knew how to make an antenna that he named himself "Germanenfilter", because it could bypass the interception systems of the Germans at the time.

After World War II ended, Ottens earned an engineering degree, and immediately joined Philips at its factory in Hasselt, Belgium in 1952. Eight years later, he was promoted to director of the division. product development has just been opened by Philips. Within a year, Ottens introduced the EL 3585, Philips' first compact music recording system, which later sold over 1 million units.

Mr. Lou Ottens had the idea and has been involved in the development of cassette tapes since the early 1960s. At that time, Ottens wanted to develop a device so that people could listen to music at an affordable, accessible price without tapes. large at the time could not do. So he created a prototype wooden cassette that could fit in his pocket to help navigate the project. He also later worked to convince Philips to license his invention to other manufacturers for free.

Just two years later, Ottens created the biggest turning point of his career, as well as completely changing the recording industry. Like every other idea, it was born from the ambition to make life more comfortable and convenient. The tapes at that time were too bulky, complicated, and heavy. He once said: "The cassette tape was simply invented because of the inconvenience of the tape technology of the time." Ottens' idea was to create a tape that would fit in a jacket pocket. In 1963, the first prototype of the cassette was introduced at the Berlin electronics fair with the slogan: "Smaller than a pack of cigarettes!"

According to Wikipedia, in August 1963, Philips introduced the Compact Cassette and the cassette player (first introduced at the Funkausstellung Broadcasting Expo in Berlin, Germany), with the same operation as the mortar, but both two tapes are smaller and housed in a plastic case. From 1965, popular cassettes began to be sold on the market, at first could only play in mono sound quality (single channel sound, single speaker), but since 1966 there have been stereo cassettes ( multichannel).

The images of Philips cassette products were then shipped to Japan, where electronics manufacturers tried to copy the recipe. In the end, Ottens and Philips signed an agreement with Sony that made the tape cassette and the Philips-made cassette audio transceiver standard.

In 1972, Ottens became the director of Philips NatLab, where he continued to contribute to another revolution: the CD. The process of cooperation between Philips and Sony created a product launched in 1980, a thin 12cm diameter disc that reads data with a laser eye. It quickly became the new standard to this day.

By 1988, Philips alone, a giant Dutch electronics manufacturer, had sold about 3 billion cassettes. Other famous cassette tape manufacturers include TDK, Maxell, BASF, Sony, JVC, Nakamichi... The later development variants of cassettes such as Digital Audio Tape (DAT), Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) ) (developed in the years 1992-1996)... However, with the rapid transformation of the digital market, these products are not able to compete with others in the long term and are not universally popular. bridge.

According to Engadget, after the invention of the cassette, Mr. Ottens continued to help Philips and Sony in the development of the compact disc. Lou Ottens has worked for Philips since 1952 and stayed with the company until his retirement.

More than 100 billion cassettes and more than 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide. But recalling the past, Mr. Ottens always harbors regret, when Sony launched a pocket-sized cassette player before Philips. You all know how successful the Walkman was in the 80s and 90s.

In the documentary Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (2016), Ottens said: "I expected the cassette to be a success, but I didn't expect it to be revolutionary." Zack Taylor, the film's director, said: "Cassette has taught us how to convey our thoughts with carefully compiled songs in the mixtape. So every time we create a playlist on the app. online, you should thank Ottens' invention".

Not only that, but he himself doesn't believe in the recent popularity of cassettes, or even vinyl records. In an interview with NRC Handelsblad, he said: "Nothing beats the sound quality of a CD. It has absolutely no vibrations and no noise. What CDs can achieve, magnetic tape can't be. . I've built a lot of music players and I know that the distortion in vinyl is very high. But I think in the end people only listen to what they want."

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