Music that fits in your pocket: the story of audio cassettes and their creator Lou Ottens

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The Philips engineer revolutionized the music industry by giving people the ability to listen to music anywhere. And later, he himself destroyed the cassette format by creating CDs.



In 1963, Philips introduced the pocket-sized compact cassette. The development was led by Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, who is considered the father of a new musical era.

He was born on June 21, 1926 in the Netherlands, in the city of Bellingwold. His parents were teachers, and Lou himself was fond of electronics and radio engineering from childhood. During World War II, he made a radio receiver that, despite interference, caught the signal of the Dutch Orange radio.

In 1952, Lou graduated from Delft University of Technology iran number data and joined Philips. In 1960, he became head of the development department. Together with his team, he created the first compact audio cassette and the Philips EL 3300 battery-powered portable cassette recorder.

In the spring of 2021, the inventor died .

Before the Philips compact cassette, music was mainly listened to on reel-to-reel tape recorders. The device was large, and the tape had to be wound on the reel by hand. In addition, it was exposed and easily damaged.



One night, Ottens decided to listen to music, but the tape came unwound from the reel: he had to rewind it. The next morning, he came to work with the idea of ​​creating a more convenient and compact audio medium.

The size and shape of the future cassette was modeled after a wooden block that Ottens brought to his team—it fit in his jacket pocket.

The first compact cassette
The ideas of Philips developers were based on the inventions of the Radio Corporation of America and engineer Peter Goldmark.

In 1958, Radio Corporation of America created the RCA Sound Tape Cartridge. It was the first attempt to put reel-to-reel tape in a compact form. It measured 5 by 7 inches (12.7 by 17.7 cm), contained two reels, and contained the same tape used in the old reel-to-reel tape recorder.

The RCA Sound Tape Cartridge did not become popular because the cassette could only be listened to on a special audio system. One cassette cost $7.95, which is about $72 in 2021 exchange rates.

In response, Peter Goldmark, inventor of the first vinyl car stereo, the Highway Hi-Fi, came up with a solution for the single-reel cassette. These cassettes also failed to catch on, but the new tape format—3.81 mm wide—became the basis for modern cassettes.