DailyKenn.com — It's normal, I suppose, to take inventions for granted. The truth is, we are surrounded by countless thousands of life-enhancing innovations while taking little thought of who invented them.
200 latest news reports from 100 top conservative websites
One such life-changing innovation was the cassette tape. The man who invented the cassette in 1963, Lou Ottens, has died at the age of 94.
Excerpted from npr.org ▼
Lou Ottens, who put music lovers around the world on a path toward playlists and mixtapes by leading the invention of the first cassette tape, has died at age 94, according to media reports in the Netherlands. Ottens was a talented and influential engineer at Philips, where he also helped develop consumer compact discs.
Ottens died last Saturday, according to the Dutch news outlet NRC Handelsblad, which lists his age as 94.
The cassette tape was Ottens' answer to the large reel-to-reel tapes that provided high-quality sound but were seen as too clunky and expensive. He took on the challenge of shrinking tape technology in the early 1960s, when he became the head of new product development in Hasselt, Belgium, for the Dutch-based Philips technology company.