Lou Ottens, inventor of the audio cassette, died at 94

Louis Ottens – the Dutch engineer who is credited with inventing the audio cassette – has died at the age of 94.

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad first reported that Ottens died on March 6 in Duizel, the Netherlands. No cause of death was provided.

A longtime engineer at the Dutch electronics and technology company Philips, Ottens – as head of the product development department – led the Belgian team tasked with converting the bulky reel tape recorders of the time into something more portable and more general public. -friendly; Ottens’ goal was to make a cassette that could fit into the inside pocket of a jacket.

“The cassette was invented out of irritation with the existing tape recorder, it’s that simple,” Ottens said of his invention, NRC Handelsblad reported. Ottens also spoke about the invention in the 2011 documentary Cassette: a documentary mixtape. “I expected it to be a success, not a revolution,” he said in the film.

After its development, the Philips audio cassette made its debut at electronics fairs in August 1963. Soon after, Japanese electronics companies created their own iteration of the audio cassette in various sizes, but Ottens made reached an agreement between Sony and Philips to ensure that their model would become the patented cassette of the market.

(Americans, however, would remain stuck with the 8-track cartridge for about another decade until Sony’s Walkman revolutionized music portability; one of Ottens’ biggest regrets, according to NRC Handelsblad, was that Sony and not Philips invented the Walkman, “the perfect app for tape… It still hurts that we don’t have one.”)

Even as cassettes and vinyl records solidified as the dominant formats for pre-recorded music, Ottens – now Philips’ audio director – commissioned a team to develop compact disc technology for the mainstream market; Once the technology was quickly replicated by competitors, Ottens again partnered between Philips and Sony to make their model the global standard.

While cassette sales have declined and nearly died out in the age of compact discs, MP3s and digital technology, the format has experienced a renaissance in recent years. However, Ottens called the cassette resurgence “nonsense,” adding that nothing could match the sound of the compact disc.