The inventor of cassette tape and CD, Lou Ottens dies at 94

The Dutch engineer, Lou Ottens, who invented the audio cassette tape, passed away at 94 on March 6 in Duizel, the Netherlands.

Ottens was born in Bellingwolde in 1926, started working at the Philips factory in Belgium in 1952 after obtaining his engineering degree. He was promoted to head the newly established Product Development Department in 1960. Ottens and his team is credited to have developed the world's first portable tape recorder that sold more than a million copies.

In 1963, Ottens presented the first cassette tape at the Berlin Radio Show electronics fair. Soon after the fair, the Japanese came up with their own version of the cassette. He then struck a deal between Sony and Philips to patent his creation that gained worldwide popularity.

However, Ottens displayed his irritation later about the first Walkman "the ideal application for the cassette" introduced by Sony and not Philips. "It still hurts that we didn't have one."

Ottens also worked in Phillips and Sony's joint development of the Compact Disk (CD) that came out in 1979. He retired in 1986. Over 100 billion cassettes and 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide.