Inventor of the Cassette Tape dies age 94

This was on our evening news towards the end.
Lou Ottens, inventor of the cassette tape and a CD pioneer has died aged 94

Read more at DutchNews.nl:

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/03/dutch-inventor-of-the-audio-cassette-tape-dies-aged-94/

Interesting to read what he said about the Walkman. I suppose inventing the Cassette it relied on, and being heavily involved in the development of the CD was still very satisfying.

 

I wonder why he regretted that Sony invented the walkman? Surely he would have known about the Stereo Belt and the long running battle thereof? But another sad loss to the world. Another truly innovative mind lost. RIP, and thanks for all you gave us.

 

I guess he regrets that Philips didn't have the idea earlier.

I guess very people knew about the Stereobelt and many of those who did probably thought it was impractical, which being based on a car cassette player with a separate battery pack it probably was.

Compared to the CD which took literally decades of research, the first Walkman was probably knocked together by Sony engineers in a month or two, especially since both the dictating machine it was based on and Stereo tape heads had been around for years. In an earlier thread I commented that the headphones supplied with it were actually the most innovative part, that made it popular.

Philips had some big successes like CD but also invested £ millions into products that flopped like Laserdisc, Video 2000, and CDi, so much so that the consumer products labelled Philips these days are other low end companies products using the name under licence.

 

"Philips had some big successes like CD but also invested £ millions into products that flopped like Laserdisc, Video 2000, and CDi, so much so that the consumer products labelled Philips these days are other low end companies products using the name under licence"

Actually Video 2000 was mainly a flop marketing-wise (and a huge one at that). Technically, it was far superior to both Betamax and VHS, but Philips' timing was horribly off and they were principally against pre-recorded porn. The competition had less scrupels and Video 2000 was done for.

 

You are right about the first two points but (as far as the UK is concerned) the porn story is a complete myth. Due to cost and reliability most people in the UK rented their VCRs and the company that owned most of the rental chains had shares in JVC. They came very close to giving us VHD as well building a disc factory here.

I bought my first VCR in 1984 and even then it was obvious VHS was winning despite Betamax machines like the fairly popular Sanyo VTC5000 being cheaper. If you went in a video rental shop for normal films and they had 500 VHS titles, 200 Betamax and 50 Video2000 which are you going to choose ?

Away from Video2000, comedian Lenny Henry finished off Betamax in the UK inthe mid 1980s with a joke;
"If you get burgled, the first thing the thieves always go for is the VCR. Well I have a solution. No one is ever going to steal my VCR. I was smart. I bought a Betamax."

Some more figures