His invention changed the lives of music fans for generations. Many tributes were paid on Friday, March 12 to Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, considered the inventor of the audio cassette and one of the designers of the compact disc.
Created by Lou Ottens while working for the Dutch electronics company Philips, the cassettes made music really small for the first time, and allowed a generation of music fans to create mixsteps – collections of their favorite songs.
More than 100 billion cassettes were produced worldwide from the 1960s to the 1980s. Both sides and very easy to register. Saw recent interest again. “It saddened all of us to know the passing of Lou Ottens, Olga Coolen, director of the Phillips Museum in Eindhoven, responded to a message sent to AFP. Lou is an extraordinary man who loved technology despite his innovative beginnings. “
Phillips said he died on March 6 in the village of Dssell, near the Belgian border. Born in 1926 in the Dutch city of Bellingvolde, Lou Ottens showed an interest in technology from an early age when the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II.
He specifically built a radio that allowed him to receive the “free Dutch” radio orange, thanks to a special antenna “Germanfilter” The Dutch newspaper NRC reported that it had avoided Nazi jammers.
Lou Ottens joined Phillips after studying engineering at university, where he and his team developed the world’s first small tape recorder, the company says. But he was soon frustrated by the huge scroll system that required manual winding, so he invented the cassette in 1962. “Cassette found out of annoyance with existing tape recorder, it’s that easy”Lou Ottens, quoted by the NRC, said in an interview.
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