International Desk :
Lou Ottens, the Dutch inventor of the cassette tape, has died, reports UNB.
Ottens died on Saturday at the age of 94, according to Philips, the company where he also helped develop the compact disc.
A structural engineer who trained at the prestigious Technical University in Delft, Ottens joined Philips in 1952. He was head of the Dutch company’s product development department when he began work on an alternative for existing tape recorders and their cumbersome spools of tape.
His goal was simple: Make tapes and their players far more portable and easier to use.
“During the development of the cassette tape in the early 1960s, he had a wooden block made that fit exactly in his coat pocket,” said Olga Coolen, director of the Phillips Museum in the southern city of Eindhoven.
“This was how big the first Compact Cassette was to be, making it a lot handier than the bulky tape recorders in use at the time,” Coolen added.
In 1962, the final product turned out to be a worldwide hit. More than 100 billion cassettes were sold, many to music fans who would record their own compilations directly from the radio. Its popularity waned with the development of the compact disc, which Ottens also helped create as the supervisor of a development team, Philips said.
The cassette tape’s success stemmed from its simplicity, Ottens said in an interview published by the Philips Museum.
“It was a breakthrough because it was foolproof,” he said, adding that players and recorders also could run on batteries, making them very user-friendly and portable.
“Everybody could put music in their pocket,” Ottens said.
The prototype wooden block never made it to the company’s museum. Ottens used it to prop up his jack when replacing a wheel with a flat tire and left it by the side of a road, Coolen informed.
“Lou loved technology. When he talked about it, his eyes began to twinkle,” museum director Coolen said.
