A Philips cassette tape is proven in 1965. Lou Ottens, who lead the invention of the primary cassette tape, has died at 94.
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A Philips cassette tape is proven in 1965. Lou Ottens, who lead the invention of the primary cassette tape, has died at 94.
Alfred Assmann/Image Alliance through Getty Pictures
Lou Ottens, who put music-lovers all over the world on a path towards playlists and mixtapes by main the invention of the primary cassette tape, has died at age 94, in line with media stories within the Netherlands. Ottens was a gifted and influential engineer at Philips, the place he additionally helped develop client compact discs.
Ottens died final Saturday, in line with the Dutch information outlet NRC Handelsblad, which lists his age as 94.
The cassette tape was Ottens’ reply to the big reel-to-reel tapes that supplied high-quality sound however had been seen as too clunky and costly. He took on the problem of shrinking tape expertise within the early 1960s, when he turned the pinnacle of latest product growth in Hasselt, Belgium, for the Dutch-based Philips expertise firm.
“Lou wished music to be moveable and accessible,” says documentary filmmaker Zack Taylor, who spent days with Ottens for his movie, Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape.
Ottens’ purpose was to make one thing easy and inexpensive for anybody to make use of. As Taylor says, “He advocated for Philips to license this new format to different producers without cost, paving the best way for cassettes to grow to be a worldwide commonplace.”
However first, he needed to invent it. Making an attempt to ascertain one thing that did not but exist, Ottens used a wood block that was small and skinny sufficient to slot in his pocket because the goal for what the way forward for tape recording and playback must be.
The consequence was unveiled to the world in 1963, and the so-called “compact cassette” rapidly took off: It was “a sensation” from the beginning, Ottens instructed Time in 2013, on the cassette’s 50th anniversary.
“Lou was a rare man who liked expertise, at the same time as his innovations had humble beginnings,” mentioned Philips Museum Director Olga Coolen. She famous that Ottens’ unique wood prototype for the cassette “was misplaced when Lou used it to prop up his jack whereas change a flat tire.”
Born in 1926, Ottens went from constructing a radio for his household throughout World Conflict II – it reportedly had a directional antenna, so it may concentrate on radio alerts regardless of Nazi jamming makes an attempt — to growing expertise that may democratize music.
“Cassettes taught us the way to use our voice, even when the message got here from another person’s songs, compiled painstakingly on a mixtape,” Taylor mentioned. Describing how little issues have modified, he added, “So subsequent time you make that good playlist on Spotify, or ship a hyperlink to share a track, you’ll be able to thank Lou Ottens.”
Ottens was famously unsentimental concerning the invention that has accounted for some 100 billion gross sales, in line with NRC. In a profession dedicated to in search of larger constancy and advancing expertise, he dismissed tapes as primitive, vulnerable to noise and distortion.
True to their do-it-yourself roots, cassette mixtapes have lengthy been a favourite of punk and rock followers. However their legacy additionally looms giant in hip-hop, the place aspiring rappers and producers have used the strategy to showcase their capacity to cut up different music and create one thing new. The mixtape ethos has survived, and even thrived, regardless of the transfer from magnetic tape to CDs and digital codecs.
Almost 20 years after Philips launched cassette tapes, Ottens helped the corporate develop compact disc expertise for the patron market and, with Sony, to decide on a format that may grow to be the trade commonplace.
“To any extent further, the standard file participant is out of date,” Ottens declared when manufacturing CD gamers emerged, because the BBC reported.
Cassette tapes gave new management to music followers, permitting them to create and share their very own collections of songs in an inexpensive and simply moveable format.
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Pictures
Cassette tapes gave new management to music followers, permitting them to create and share their very own collections of songs in an inexpensive and simply moveable format.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Pictures
Related predictions had been made concerning the cassette tape. However curiosity within the format has surged lately, regardless of the remaking of the music trade within the digital and streaming age.
The resurgence is pushed by a mixture of nostalgia and an appreciation for tapes’ distinctive standing as a tangible however versatile format. For many years, music followers have used mixtapes to curate and share their favourite songs. Unsigned bands have additionally relied on them as a method to promote their music.
Those that used cassettes to rapidly file music embody the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, who famously mentioned he captured considered one of his band’s largest songs in the course of the evening.
“I wrote ‘Satisfaction’ in my sleep,” Richards wrote in Life, his 2010 autobiography. Including that he had no reminiscence of writing the track, Richards mentioned he awakened one morning to seek out his Philips cassette recorder was on the finish of its tape — apparently, he concluded, he had written one thing throughout the evening.
When Richards rewound the tape, he heard the track’s now-iconic guitar riff, and his voice saying, “I am unable to get no satisfaction.”
For a lot of, cassettes have stored their cult standing as a result of they fulfill a twin promise of being each inexpensive and private. They’ll maintain something from a fastidiously sequenced lineup of uncommon recordings to kids placing on their very own radio present.
“It is probably the most accessible, best, least expensive manner for anybody to file a bit of audio,” Matthew David of the Leaving Information music label instructed NPR again in 2011, when cassettes had been additionally having fun with a renaissance.
Cassette tapes have additionally grow to be collector’s objects. When Raekwon’s solo debut Solely Constructed four Cuban Linx… hit the market in 1995, as an example, it arrived in a uncommon purple-hued tape that turned a cultural touchstone and a hotly sought merchandise.
Ottens’ demise follows a banner yr for his invention. In 2020, a variety of musicians discovered success promoting cassette tapes, from Woman Gaga to Ozzy Osbourne and from Selena Gomez to the Gorillaz.
Coolen mentioned the runaway success of Ottens’ concepts stunned him.
“‘We knew it may grow to be large, however may have by no means imagined it might be a revolution,” she quoted him saying.