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Resurrection
Paul Golder
Remembering the good old cassette tape … and its inventor, Lou Ottens, who has passed away aged 94.
Without him, my bedroom in the 1980s and 1990s, my living room in the 2000s, and boxes in my loft in the 2010s and 2020s would look a lot different. (I am always threatening Mrs G to decant all my physical music from those boxes and put up shelves in our living room again … but she knows I’m just too busy with all this stuff to do we all have to do all the time …)
Not my cassettes. Mine are in a box in the loft. I already said this, pay attention
Following World War II, Ottens obtained an engineering degree, and he started work at the Philips factory in Hasselt, Belgium, in 1952. Eight years later he was promoted to head of the company’s newly established product development department, and within a year he unveiled the EL 3585, Philips’s first portable tape recorder, which would go on to sell more than a million units.
But it was two years later that Ottens made the biggest breakthrough of his life – born out of annoyance with the clumsy and large reel-to-reel tape systems of the time. “The cassette tape was invented out of irritation about the existing tape recorder, it’s that simple,” he would later say.
Ottens’s idea was that the cassette tape that should fit in the inside pocket of his jacket. 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!”
In 1972 Ottens became director of audio at Philips’ NatLab, where he became involved in the next major music innovation: the CD. A collaboration was entered into with Sony and in 1980 the 12cm Philips-Sony CD standard was ready for the world.
More than 100bn cassette tapes and 200bn CDs have been sold. When asked about his regrets, Ottens lamented that Sony had brought out the first Walkman. “It still hurts that we didn’t have one,” he said.
He had little patience with the renewed popularity of the cassette tape – or even vinyl. “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.” (I still love cassettes. Vinyl, not so much).
Tonight’s playlist, all of which was on MP3 and not on cassette:
Clash – Complete Control
Hybrid Kid – Coming Round Again
Chase – Black Cloud
Coach Party – Everybody Hates Me
Distorted Model – Live My Life
Graywave – Swallow
Pony – Chokecherry
Cherym – Kisses On My Cards
Lyerr – Doctors Orders
Hadda Be – Another Life
Nova Twins – Taxi
Constant Harmony – Shut Up Karen
Snakedoctors – A Song
Catenary Wires – Mirrorball
Vix20 – Broken Melody
Indigo Curve – Unchained
Socata – Fine and Dando
Blanketman – Leave The South
deep tan – camelot
Italia 90 – Borderline
New Pagans – Harbour
Pet Needs – Toothpaste
Waax – Fired Up
Senseless Things – Should I Feel It
Dub Sex – Swerve
Mega City Four – What’s Up
Stare – Stare
Milltown Brothers – Here I Stand
Sultans of Ping FC – Robocop
Dylans – Planet Love
New Fast Automatic Daffodils – All Over My Face
Darling Buds – Sure Thing
School Of Fish – 3 Strange Days
World Of Twist – Sweets
