Lou Ottens, inventor of the cassette tape, dies aged 94
 

Great man he will be missed.
Nickys Nation.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...box=1615464357


[Lou Ottens, the Dutch engineer credited
with inventing the cassette tape and
playing a major role in the development
of the first CD, has died aged 94 at his home
in the village of Duizel in North Brabant.

As product development manager
at Philips, Ottens twice revolutionised
the world of music, but he remained modest
to the end. “We were little boys who had
fun playing,” he said. “We didn’t feel like we
were doing anything big. It was a kind of sport.”

Ottens, born on 21 June 1926, showed an early
interest in engineering, building a radio
as a teenager through which he and his
parents could receive Radio Oranje
during Germany’s wartime occupation
of the Netherlands. He equipped the
device with a directional antenna that
he called a “Germanenfilter” because
it could avoid the jammers used
by the Nazi regime.]


[In 1963 the first tape was presented
to the world at an electronics fair
in Berlin with the tagline
“Smaller than a pack of cigarettes!”]

Happy memories of listening to tapes.................unhappy memories of trying to unwind and re-wind the tape when it got tangled up though :laugh:

Who is old enough to get triggered by this picture?

https://i.redd.it/hcprcw46yqd11.jpg

Me :laugh:

I still have nightmares of trying to repair a favourite tape where the tape snapped with sellotape. It was always worse when it chewed it up in your car, many a near crash trying to drive with my knees whilst trying to wind it back on

Yes :laugh2:

Oh and trying to tape songs off the radio, you'd have sit there for hours waiting for the song you wanted to come on and then hope the DJ doesn't talk all over it

aw taping the top 40 on a Sunday night, teenage years :flutter:

one of the best presents I got as a kid was when I got a double tape deck so you could record from one tape to another. Mix tapes were the best gift you could give anyone :laugh:

[“Nothing can match the sound of the CD,”
he had told the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
“It is absolutely noise and rumble-free.
That never worked with tape … I have made
a lot of record players and
I know that the distortion with vinyl
is much higher.
I think people mainly hear what they want to hear.”]


His View
is Bang on Right.

i was always extremely angry when artists intentionally extended the length of their albums so you couldnt' fit it on 1 side of a C90 :fist: