Obituary: Compact cassette inventor Lou Ottens

Lou Ottens, who invented the compact cassette tape and had a hand in the development of the CD while working for Netherlands-based electronics company Philips, has died at the age of 94.

The website DutchNews.com said he died March 6 at his home near Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Ottens joined Philips in 1952 and was picked to head its new products development division in 1960. Within a year the group had invented the compact cassette as a plastic-encased, portable version of a cumbersome reel-to-reel recording system.

"I expected it would be a success, but not a revolution," Ottens said in Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape, a film involving him, his invention and its fans. The movie was released in 2016 and is currently streaming on multiple platforms.

Ottens and his team wanted a final product small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and easy to use on machines the company also developed. Philips later worked with other manufacturers to create standards that would allow cassettes to be made and used worldwide.

While Ottens was declared the inventor, he credited his team for work in developing the cassette tape system.

"I can take credit for the idea and a number of ideas in it, but the advancement, the electrical designers and the industrial designer, they have done the work," he says in the documentary. "I have done nothing special."

In the 1970s, Ottens' group at Philips helped introduce both the laser disc for video and a compact disc made of polycarbonate for audio.