It is with sadness that we take note of the death at the age of 94 of the longtime Phillips engineer Lou Ottens, best known for the origins of the Compact Cassette audio tape format that became so common through the later decades of the 20th century wash. Whether you remember cassettes as the format for 8-bit software for teen mixes on a Walkman, they started life on his hands in the early 1960s at the Phillips factory in Hasselt, Belgium.
Through a long career at the Dutch electronics company, he was directly or partially responsible for a range of consumer electronic devices that we would see ubiquitous during the last half of the century. Prior to the cassette, he developed the company’s first portable tape recorder, and in the 1970s, while being technical director of their audio division, he led the team that would develop the CD. Reportedly, he said he was very sorry that he did not beat Sony over the development of the miniature cassette player that would be sold as the Walkman, but we would suggest that the Walkman not be without the cassette in the first place. would not have been possible.
Next time you deal with a cassette tape, spend some time with Lou, a sound engineer whose work has permeated so much of the past half century.
Thank you [Carl] for the hint.
Photos: Lou Ottens by Jordi Huisman CC BY-SA 4.0 and “An early Phillips cassette recorder” by mib18 CC BY-SA 3.0