portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Lou Ottens - Inventor of the Cassette tape passes

  Lou Ottens, Creator of the Cassette Tape, Dead at 94. 

 (Consequence Of Sound).





LOU OTTENS DIES

Lodewijk Frederik 'Lou' Ottens (21 June 1926 – 6 March 2021) was a Dutch engineer and inventor, best known for inventing the cassette tape and being involved in the development of the CD. Ottens was employed by brilliant Netherlands company Philips for the entirety of his career. He was 94


Mostly for my good friend Phil Munday (One Man Went To Moan) for his generosity and extensive collection of mixtapes sent me over the years who would appreciate Ottens' work


4 comments:

Phil Munday said...

Cheers Andy - & Lou.Dread to think how many of those blighters I inflicted on folk back in the last centur! Still got all yours btw. Love a bit of Kevin Ayers these days, too busy fighting the punk wars to give him a listen in my youth. Interested in your views of the work of the late Duggie Fields, some nice obits but in truth I only really knew about him because he popped up in Syd Barrett documentaries!

Andy Swapp said...

Hi Phil! thanks for dropping by. I still have all my tapes too! I should buy a tape to digital MP3 converter really but never get round to it but it would be fun to convert the collection.
Duggie was a great and iconic singular voice in the art world and I met him at MOMA with Andrew Lanyon I think and they were a SCREAM!
78/79 certainly late seventies I think and when Marco Livingstone was Assist Director there. There were some talk about the Alternative Miss World or something an 'event' of some kind and they both appeared at a do at MOMA with Derk Jarman but I may be misremembering . . . . . either way he was great fun and his work was though highly stylised and camp or kitsch he was a stylist. Very funny and he will be missed

Hope you are well and will be in touch soon I hope!

JohnnyC said...

C30, C60, C90 Gone...somewhere in my loft various cassettes of Peel sessions and his festive 50s ... the antidote to ‘hit’ singles. I can still hear particular songs and recall the dulcet tones of Mr P as he waxed lyrical whilst I tried to stop the recorder with the minimum amount of excess wordsmithery.... Home taping didn’t kill music, it offered detours and new pathways... Hope all good with you and Yours. All the best J

Andy Swapp said...

Superb and spot on Johnny! I have most of my c90s and mixtapes in cabinets but still downstairs (just) some rare stuff and fun too courtesy of the previous mentioned fine gentlemen with an encyclopaedic knowledge of music Mr P Munday esq.,!
Thanks for popping by JohnnyC