Image without a caption
Dutch engineer Lou Ottens holds a cassette tape in Eindhoven, Netherlands, in 2013. (Jerry Lampen/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
By
Miriam Berger
March 14, 2021 at 3:49 a.m. GMT+8
Every Walkman singalong, every road trip compilation, every mix tape to a crush or healing from a breakup or just the thrill of cranking up a boombox — it all goes back to Lou Ottens, the inventor of the humble but world-changing cassette tape.
Ottens died March 6 at age 94 in his hometown of Duizel in the Netherlands. His family announced his death to the public this week — touching off a global wave of tributes, memories and photos of people’s cassette collections and memories of crafting that perfect mix tape and hearing that classic cha-chink as it slid into a tape deck.
Lou Ottens, who invented the cassette tape and pioneered the CD, dies at 94
“Tapes were among my favourite activities as a child. I felt so empowered when I learned how to create mix tapes and I recorded many radio shows that way,” wrote a Twitter user who said they were based in Germany.
“Through this amazing invention music reached everywhere in the world,” shared one eulogist in Arabic.
رحيل مخترع الكاسيت الهولندي لو أوتنز، يجعلنا نقف أمام تلك اللحظة العظيمة التي تم فيها تسجيل أول شريط صوتي في العالم، خلال ستينات القرن الماضي، عبر هذا الاختراع المدهش وصلت الموسيقى لكل مكان في العالم... pic.twitter.com/Dj3IoK8DXa
— Rasmiah Alahmadi (@MsRasmiah) March 12, 2021
“A life’s companion,” reads another Twitter tribute from a user who said they were based in Brussels. “Every day on my way to school in the mid 70′s, all those rehearsal spaces & concerts late 70′s, fm bssl [a Brussels radio station] early 80′s, work in the 90′s & still today in my most dire moments … thank you.”
A belated shout out to #LouOtten, the inventor of the cassette tape. pic.twitter.com/EG4VBKvaYg
— thomas lee (@LeeRaymondtom) March 12, 2021
Ottens “became a god,” praised one Twitter user in Mongolian, ending their message with the praying hands emoji.
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“We’ll never look at a pencil the same way again. Thanks for everything, Lou,” tweeted a London-based radio show, referring to the way pencils were used to re-spool unraveled tapes.
To us, teamwork is everything, so it's sad to hear about the passing Lou Otten.
Without his invention, we would not be privy to one of the greatest collaborations the world has ever seen.
Roll on, Lou!#teamwork pic.twitter.com/CeEcwJAJ2x
— The Crane Event (@thecraneevent) March 11, 2021
Ottens was head of the product development department at Philips in the 1960s when his team there developed the cassette tape. Rather than relying on a clunky and larger reel-to-reel system, like other recorders of the time, Ottens’s compact recorder and corresponding tape versions did not require laborious hand reeling.
“The cassette tape was invented out of irritation about the existing tape recorder, it’s that simple,” he later said, according to the Guardian.
The novel product was patented in 1963 and unveiled at the Berlin Radio electronics fair. The cassette quickly took off in Japan, home of Philips’s competitor Sony. It soon became a worldwide hit, having tapped into demand for a decentralized way to create and access mass media.
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During the cassette tape’s heyday — before it was dethroned by the CD, which Ottens’s team also helped develop — the format was a mainstay of every audiophile, from professional musicians to teenagers. By cutting out the need for records and related companies, the format enabled individuals to make, share and listen to their choices of music. Cassettes in some cases also radically influenced politics. In the lead-up to the Iranian revolution, the then-exiled Ayatollah Khomeini built up his following through sermons secretly shared on them.
For some communities, cassettes never went away. In recent years, the compact tapes have made a comeback among some musicians. They make sure they have a pencil handy.